Chasm
by Stormdragon6
Summary: When she was a child, Sakura held Ino's hand. And then she held weights and a gun and a steel bat. Then she killed a monster with her bare hands. One of the beasts saw her that day, with blood up to her elbows and it began to follow her. For days. For years. /AU, MadaSaku./
1. Chapter 1

If anyone remembers me from when I posted as StormDragon666 (because that name was funny to me in 2005 when I made it), I'm still here. Always wanted to keep writing but could not for a very long time. A monster-human romance is incoming. Here's a long chapter for you, a long journey. Please tell me what you think of it, story-wise, writing-wise, character-wise. Give it to me. (This story is cross-posted to AO3 under my name Umbreon_ly if you prefer to read there.)

SUM: "When she was a child, Sakura held Ino's hand. And then she held weights and guns and a steel bat. Then she killed a monster with her bare hands. One of them saw her that day, with blood up to her elbows and it began to follow her. For days. For years.

Sakura is forced into a life of traveling in desperation to seek fellow refugee of a disaster that annihilated Konoha. Forced to move and fight and learn and ride where her journey bids her. Forced to watch a red-eyed beast pursue her across the wilds and over civilizations. Forcing herself to believe the road has an end and she will have happiness if she bleeds for it."

* * *

"I'd sail before a thousand moons

Never finding where to go."

\- _"Sleeping Sun" -_ Tuomas Holopainen

* * *

A long way backwards in time there was Ino, all of eight years old, perched on her bed and prattling in her ear. She held Sakura's shapeless hair in her hand and brushed, brushed, brushed as her own mother had taught her. She shared with Sakura how to comb hair to make it pretty. Through her, Sakura learned how to braid. She learned much of her sense from Ino.

The year after they met, they managed to stay together in school without fail. Every day they followed the line of children and chaperones and lanterns till they made it into a bright, bright school building with pretty lights and decorations that the two of them ogled together. Do it, do it, do it, chanted Ino to Sakura nearly every day, until Sakura did something that made her stand taller or talk louder or move faster. With Ino prodding her back, she won the math competition. She started winning the games. She was good at shouting, good at math. She loved to hold Ino's hand.

Sometimes when dark visited during the day, she invited Ino to spend the hours at her house and they played and shouted till it was night and they tired themselves into sleep. Once, men carrying heavy equipment came to the door to speak to Sakura's parents and were answered by two young girls splattered with talentless makeup. Sakura pretended not to be embarrassed. Another skill from Ino.

At school they were taught probing and gardening. Ino hid behind her friend's legs and the plaster pots of young squash and wrote a letter to a boy she liked. She passed it to Sakura, who balled it up and threw it at him. He jumped and started and almost fell. The teacher had them sit in a corner. They did, and laughed and grinned and sometimes stomped their feet. Another boy who had started to eat the cucumber sample ended up joining them. The three of them laughed together.

You're the worst, Ino said, still giggling and fighting tears. You're the best, Sakura said back.

Or perhaps that was reverse order. She didn't remember which of them said which phrase, but she knew she bumped against Ino's shoulder, like friends do, and she was happy to be there. Her parents would hear of it and they would fuss but today she didn't mind. She might have been twelve today. Thirteen?

By the time she was thirteen, the men in heavy gear started coming to everyone's door. Frequently. She knew they were the ones who regularly went out in dark time and patrolled streets and other masculine things like that, but their constant banging on the door angered her. Once she opened the door and told them to be quiet, her mom was napping. The squad leader slapped her and shoved her out of the way.

Later, she cried. Her mother held ice to a bruise on her cheek. She shivered. She was ashamed. Her mother never wavered in the face of such stress, she never cried, she always spoke to the men like she was the one who held a gun.

She was plenty old enough now to not be sheltered, and she knew what was outside, in a way, but her mother told her everything she knew that night. Sakura learned that the funny man who owned Ichiraku downtown didn't close his business and move last year. Something had crawled into his building and eaten his food stores, spilled the wine in his cellar and eaten his barrels and then eaten him. The townsfolk did not go near his building and the men with guns demolished the building the next morning. It wasn't in the newspaper after, but everyone knew—but Sakura, apparently—that the day after, a strange man was pacing in front of the ruined brick. The same men came back and killed him. He was eight feet tall and as expected, it was not a man at all.

This kind of thing happens a lot, said her father.

This kind of thing had happened in the next down over, she knew, three years ago, but Sakura had only cared then because her favorite toy store closed. The kids made a popular game that week from the story the teachers told about it: they made a block tower and knocked it over and the It Men kids ran around and around it and wouldn't leave the rubble alone, while a team of policeman kids threw rubber balls at them to beat them up. Her father interrupts her story—he doesn't laugh at her, she thought he would laugh—and tells her that they're not called It Men but he also doesn't call them anything. He says they wander around whenever it's a dark time, and they can wander in woods or they might wander into a street. That's what the incidents are.

That's why everyone goes indoors and goes quiet whenever it turns dark. Sakura knows that. Her father says sometimes they wander right past people, utterly indifferent and sometimes they choose to stop somewhere, like Ichiraku, and they sort of wake up, and they go berserk and hit things and eat things. And then the gunmen have to come. There's no telling how they will behave.

Sakura's mother had always taken an interest in Sakura's grades in self-defense class, much more so than the science tests or pretty diagrams she brought home. Sakura knew they made the kids take this class so they could help themselves if they were in danger—the teachers said so, the teachers had said so when she was eight—but her mother said it differently.

Her mother said, you have a good arm, Sakura. You're strong. You're so strong. You can win against anything, I've seen it. So tomorrow, we're going downtown and I'm buying you a gun, and a bat. You need to have those.

Her parents spent another two hours explaining why she needed them. Sakura nodded, nodded, nodded till she stopped hearing what her mother was saying and only wanted to tell her yes to make her stop talking. She only really listened for a mention of whether or not the things were wandering into their street, or the school's street or the two shopping streets but they never said that. She didn't want to ask. She wanted to talk to Ino or Hinata, but the phone lines were shut off by the time the conversation was done.

The next morning, her parents made one of her favorite breakfasts for her and even added chocolate sauce to the top of it. It was delicious per usual, but her hands shook while she ate. She hadn't slept well and her pulsing insides felt like she was in a menstrual week, but colder.

And hours later and a school day later—Sakura told everything she could to Ino, but not all to Hinata, even softer than she—and they went on a shopping trip. They went into a store that sold big guns and little guns and knives and expensive wine. They picked a small ten-bullet piece that she recognized. Mr. Izumo, the gardening teacher, for the students over age 10, wore one of those on his belt. Sakura swallowed a dozen lumps in her throat and told them she was better at close-up fighting, but her mother already knew that. They bought her a heavy bat made of steel that had some spikes on the end of it. Sakura told them it wasn't even that heavy and they complimented her weight training.

That night, they let her have a glass of one of the wines they picked out, too. Her parents laughed and laughed at jokes that she thought were stupid, but the wine was syrupy and warm and pretty nice.

Sakura called Ino that evening before the phone shutdown and told her the events of the day. But whatever assurance she might have sought from her best friend wasn't there. Instead Sakura gave the assurance because Ino's voice quivered as she spoke. She told Ino that she was a great shot with throwing knives, and Sakura's mother has a spare that Ino can take if her own parents can't buy the good kind. Ino asked Sakura for advice on how to talk and act when her parents took her to a weaponry store. Sakura didn't feel any worse for wear of it. Her stomach and her head had worn themselves ragged already and felt just the same after she dispensed advice she barely felt qualified to give.

Days passed and Sakura asked to be allowed more weight training in self-defense class. She took the weights home, and helped Hinata train her muscles, too. One day a boy told her that she looked really good holding her gun, because she was pretty now, and boys cared now. Sakura grinned and giggled and composed herself to thank him. The boy walked away with his first flash of manhood, knowing he'd made a brash girl blush.

Soon, her arm muscles were growing with the rest of her—her hair grew out a little, for once—and she delighted in the Sunday town outings with her friends. She delighted in being delighted, and sharing the feeling unto her friends. They were at a clothing shop with Ino's father as chaperone once, and Sakura and Hinata held up matching white blouses of a supreme cotton blend that they simply had to buy. A dark time came but it only meant they spent three extra hours trying on the tops and Sunday shoes and giggling very quietly, even when Mr. Inoichi told them to shut up. Hinata bought everything with her father's money and Sakura carried the piles of things by herself since Ino insisted she had no such strength to do it with.

Maybe she was fourteen by this time. So was Hinata, but Ino wasn't. When she was fourteen, another Ichiraku happened. This time it was on the street that intersected with Hinata's home. The really nice homes.

One of the things came into town in a dark time and wandered through the streets. People had seen it, almost too late. It walked right by the foolish Hayate, who had briefly gone outside. It stopped at the house where Asuma and Kurenai lived and it destroyed everything. It ate Mirai.

The gunmen did their job and burned the place down and destroyed the thing before it could escape the wreckage and do more harm. The newspaper also said that a second one had been spotted outside town, but it turned away and went east before it could hit the town entrance arch. Sakura read the newspaper and threw it away. Nowadays, she hated newspapers and read everything in the world except for them. Except for the harbinger of the worst news she could imagine. Her mother read the same paper and said that it was getting worse. Kumo hadn't had an incident for four or five years. Why here, why come to us? We do our lanterns, we're indoors during all the dark times and we don't bother them or touch them or go near them. Ever. So why? Sakura sought answers in books and several times reported her total dearth of answers to her best friend, who threw knives at the wall and sighed.

She went to school and learned to beat wild animals and skin them and cook them and climb rock walls. She learned pages and pages of other defensive methods against the things that wandered in, but everyone's lives still fumbled to a halt when one came in. The townsfolk slapped hands over mouths and silently padded indoors and prayed that the thing wouldn't decide to pick them, but nobody but a gunmen ever was allowed or dared to go outside and fight them anyway.

When she was fifteen, barely—snow-white birthday shoes only worn once—it happened again. One month later. Three weeks after the funeral, in the bright, early morning. Two of them came. They canceled school. They shut off the phone lines. Sakura had her bat ready in her right hand and the gun ready to be pulled by her left. Her father had a shotgun. Her mother was trapped at work.

Down the street, theirstreet, a man screamed. Sakura learned the crashing, cluttering and heavy sound of a house collapsing. Its tremors spread huge vibrations that reached up into her feet and knees and rattled there. Kizashi Haruno reached somewhere behind him and found a second, slimmer gun. Sakura was shaking. Wishing. Go away. Go away. Oh lord. Just go away.

If he's busy down at that house, it'd be a long walk for him to get here, said her father with some sort of smile. Be sharp, my girl. Just in ca—

It tore through the front door.

Sakura screamed and pulled her gun. She fired at something huge and black, bigger than their doorway. Her father had already fired a stream of bullets. They were louder than the school ones, so loud it hurt. She actually closed her eyes, and then fell down. Its feet were massive and made tremors and cracks in their floor. It sounded like an angered bear.

Then it sounded like a wounded dog. Her father ran to stand in front of her and fired more, more, more. As Sakura scrambled to stand, she finally held up her own gun and got a better look at the thing. It was black or green or both and had four legs. It was covered in thin veil-like material that hung off its head and back, rags or skin or layers of disgusting swamp algae. The disgust brought her back to herself and she aimed her gun again to join her father in the shooting.

Kizashi had already shot it in the eyes and that was why it was whining. It dribbled slime onto their floor. Her mother's floor. Sakura pointed her first shot it in its front-left thigh, aiming for muscle. She missed. Her father stopped his own volley, gasped and grunted and pushed her suddenly backwards. He bid her go upstairs and go out the bathroom window and to Mr. Izumo's. Now. Go.

She said she had to stay and help, that's what you're supposed to do, that's how the lessons at school do it. There was no sign that he heard her. He repeated his command exactly the same, but louder. Sakura sputtered out a cry and went. Up the stairs. Grab the post at the top and turn. Something on the ground level thumped to the floor and her father shot again. She was in the bathroom when a tearing sound reached her. Ripping. Her father gurgling and choking.

It's not him, it's not true. It's fine. He's coming.

She threw her bat out the window first—dumb—and then jumped. Air flowed and then seared past her as she came down and thumped onto the ground. Feet and knees first. It didn't hurt. She practiced. But her stomach did hurt, her chest hurt. There was something like nausea, like coldness, infecting her. She couldn't breathe fast enough.

Up in the window was only empty space and one visible corner of the old medicine cabinet. Her father hadn't come after her. He was in the house. She had to get him. It occurred to her a moment later that she couldn't do that. The thing bit him. It choked him? It had. Her father had choked, or was choking right now, right now. She spewed out a breath she'd choked on before, gagged on the cold, terrified feeling. She sobbed.

She ran away. Her legs were wobbling, she was helpless and drunk on something. Across the backyard she went. Across the little back garden and the neighbor's garden and up someone else's backyard to the street parallel to theirs, the houses that faced the opposite way that hers did. Farther and farther away from her dad. What happened? How would she tell her mother? There would be gunmen in her own house today. What would they do to the house? All her things and the new shoes and her parents' things and the furniture? Her empty house, her daddy—

Sakura stopped thinking and scratched at her own forearms in frustration. She was near Mr. Izumo's house, but something was…climbing over the top of it. From behind it. The sky was getting darker, she thought suddenly, and she wasn't indoors like she ought to be and her legs hurt. And now she saw that what she'd first perceived as a creature climbing up over the roof was actually only the top edge of a larger silhouette. It made black outlines against the sides of the house, too. Left side, top side and right side. She was only looking at the outside edges of a creature that was bigger around than the teacher's house, and was pulling the house in towards itself. Once Sakura realized what it was, how big its mouth had to be, its size, its groaning, its, its, its. One of the It Men, she thought, stupidly, and ran. Faster than before.

Here was the end of Mr. Izumo's street, where it made a T-intersection with Ura Road. Two squads of gunmen came from both sides of Ura and ran down its intersecting street. It didn't occur to the running girl to stop them. They ran, she ran, they ignored her. They were going to Mr. Izumo's house.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate you. I hate all of you, she thought, when she jumped over a ruined house fence. A headless cow. Guns lying unused in the grass.

Sakura picked one up in her right hand, which was unusual. Her left hand still had the bat in it. She stopped to gape at the sight. She didn't remember picking it up again after jumping the window. She hadn't felt it in her hand all these long minutes. The weight of it was…was nothing. Yet her mother always said it was quite heavy.

Another crash and a stream of gunmen commands and shots jolted her again. She looked all around and assessed for threats, as proper in combat class. She turned around and went a few paces back to the guns in the middle of the yard. One rifle, two measly pistols encrusted with extra bullet braces. One ten-chamber. A basic construction and clean design that attracted her eye more than the extravagant others. She looked around again and ran off. Into another street. The shopping street where she had walked so many times. Walked under the sun many times. But it was getting dark now, the sun was being covered up.

Once she was in the middle of this street, she paused again—looked all around, looked for approaching enemies, anyone, anything—but the street was empty. Jagged, jumping screams came from multiple directions but in the empty neighborhood she saw no motion, no people. Her head swung left, up, right, looking everywhere for the sources of the noise.

Straight ahead. Beyond a nearby house's backyard. A house was starting to collapse on Nym Road, parallel to this street. She saw its roof drop into the center and the rest of it sunk and rattled downwards like a fainting man. Dust shot up. Far to her left was the sounds of shoes slapping the ground, lots of them. People fleeing. Sakura sped towards them.

She came to an intersection, corners of shops and the bakery and the bookstore. The bookstore's display window was broken and a dozen people were sprinting out of the bakery's door and windows. A wrinkled hand, the size of her own body, came out of the front door and reached for the fleeing townsfolk, and dragged back inside when it caught nothing in its fist. The folk sprinted away, everywhere, past her.

Sakura shut down her spinning, despairing whirlwinds of thought with numbers. Three. She had seen three of the things, and heard a fourth, too. One down her street had torn down a house, one came into her house, one was absorbing Mr. Izumo's home, and this one had gotten into the bakery somehow. Four of them. Four at once.

This had never happened. Not four at once, and not four in daylight, before their mid-day dark times called them outside. In her mind she heard her mother's voice, and saw her mother sitting on the couch in their cozy living room, asking aloud why such strange things were happening. Her mother sipped a bitter black coffee and oh, she could smell it.

Sakura's thoughts shut down again, and she stopped moving and breathing and believing. Ahead of her, one of them was crawling out the bakery's front window. It fell forward and onto the ground like a helpless drunken man. It was the "hand" from before, but she had mistaken its shape. It had a head shaped like a hand, with many thick and swiveling fingers. The rest of it was slug-like and covered in uneven layers of the same algae-slime-rags the first one had sported. It was thirty feet away. Its face-fingers started to point at her. It made a sound, like a moan, and underneath that was scales scraping against a hard ground and her heartbeat going too, too fast.

Another scattered crowd of people ran by, but Sakura felt no breeze and no vibrations from their movement. She felt perfectly frozen and cold and her legs were weak and dead. It was moving its whole body to face her. All of itself. It twitched, and then legs appeared. Or grew. Or came out of hiding from under its belly. And it halved the distance between them in one second. Sakura came to herself again by swallowing an instant burst of hot, awful, sand-gritty bile in her throat. There was fire somewhere behind her, air rushing.

Its legs heaved its torso upward, higher than her head. She saw a mouth placed off-center and fat pimple-eyes. The bear-like thing that had eaten her father had similar eyes. It was just as ugly. It killed her father. Her house was gone. No mother. Everything ruined and everything inside her sick.

Sakura raised her bat with her stomach erupting in tremors, vomit rising, and shoulders quivering. She screeched. When the slug thing dropped its head to take her in its mouth, she hammered her arm downward, wood-shattering, perfect. Her bat slammed down near the crown of the creature's head-and-mouth and went CRACK.

One of its legs halted mid-air and the two fingers of it curled limply inward like dead doll limbs. She put both hands on the bat this time and slammed again, faster, crueler. Its scream was like heavy paper ripping and ripping. Her own scream almost covered it; its other arm was grabbing at her and its texture was worse than her own vomit.

A strong gag came from her with that touch and threatened her with more vomit. Suddenly they were pushing against each other. Fighting. Each trying to shove the other to the ground. Sakura dug in her feet, thighs tight and hurting—it was so heavy. Her skin was twitching and shaking in revulsion, a godawful moan straining through her teeth. Its blood was thick like old milk and seeping onto her shorts. The gun she'd taken had clattered away somewhere.

She tore her arm away from the quaking grip of its left arm and struck. Hard. Again. She hit bone and heard the CRACK again. Its noises were keening up in octaves towards a howl. Sakura's entire body was filled to its extremities with invisible fire.

She struck again. The spiked end of the bat buried deep into brain or mush or something inside; she dragged her weapon towards herself, along the head-mush, while the thing groaned. Grey smoke seeped up and up and up from the dripping gash. Sakura hit and hit, and then it grabbed her bat and held it in place, so she had to let go and hit it in the skull with her fists. They came away dark red. Sakura sobbed through tears and beat it again and again and more. She won the shoving match and pushed the beast to the ground, till most of her body was on top of it and pressing into its squishing flesh. She hammered her fists home till finally she could feel them hurting.

You stole my house and my family and my clothes and my family and my, my, everything that I have! I'll take out your fucking eyes and y-your fucking brain, you ugly, ugly—shrieked a young girl.

The thing was twitching and dying and it made her feel pleasure for the first time in ages, it seemed. In minutes, truly, for the first victim and the first house had gone down less then fifteen minutes ago and Sakura's brain had ceased to perceive time. She knew nothing outside of the square of bare street and blood and meat stains she'd torn open and she had not seen any of the approaching beasts and fleeing citizens and the gunmen that had been passed by or near her the whole time.

Up the street she had come from, another thing was entering downtown. It was bigger than the slug-thing Sakura was beating alive and bigger than the bear-sized, rag-smothered thing that had torn apart her mother's carpet and her mother's husband. This one was taller than a grown man. Four-legged like a horse with a spine just peeking out its skin and the back covered in long, maroon scars. Its head was a long-snouted skull, a deer's skull or a horse's skull or a dragon's skull. Black immaterial stuff filled the space inside. There was thick fur along the neck like a mane with blood smears dribbling down the left side, and perhaps it had horns. It walked with its head slightly bowed. The feet of it, and the talons of its feet, were sharpened and heavy and crunched on the manmade road with every step.

Sakura heard none of this through her shrieks and the squishing bursts of the slug's flesh. She didn't feel the skull-faced beast watching her make her first kill.

Look! Look! Sir, look! screamed a man behind her, and only then did Sakura look.

Then her eyes swooped across the intersection and saw the huge black beast, red death eyes floating in its black headspace and staring out from the eye holes of a skull. It was looking at her. It was mid-step and set its front-left foot down on scattered bits of glass. The crunching sound curled her toes, and the sight of the beast's skull head, its teeth, were burned into her mind. It took another step after that one, and then its eyes left Sakura. It instead eyed the squad of gunmen standing to the side, but closer to the beast than she. Sakura only now took notice of them. Her eyes and weak hands flinched when she saw the far-right man's huge shoulders and blue undershirts and recognized him as the man who slapped her over two years ago.

An unseen shooter took the first shot from one of the roof's on the creature's right. The creature's side flinched, then the other men joined in firing. The bullet sounds were fast and they made a harsh punching noise where they punctured into the creature's body. The rate of their shots was faster than her father's gun had been.

The creature reacted not with a pained groan or screech, but a sudden leap. It shot forward into the crowd of men, taking shots the skull and forelimbs with no reaction, no grunt or blink. It smashed three of the men to the ground by slamming its front feet down. Like fists. It parted its bone jaws and roared. Sakura shivered and held her own arms. Her breath was coming in desperate wheezes. They were losing. All of them.

Beyond the creature's body, to its right, Sakura could see a new discolored black form approaching. No, running. Running towards the remaining gunmen with an open mouth. Six eyes.

The skullfaced creature saw its approach and swatted it with one sweep of its leg. The newcomer slammed through the window and front door and lantern post of the mailing center. Huge splats of bluish sludge drained from it. The skullfaced beast looked away, in the direction of the thing's approach, as though it wanted more prey to destroy.

Sakura heard more gunfire and heard another crashing, crumpling house behind her and to her left. The direction she'd come from, beyond the backyard with the guns, perhaps down the street. Mr. Izumo's house falling into the mouth or the soft skin of the house-sized thing.

She saw for the first time—no, second—that the world around her was getting dark. It was only seven in the morning, though the sky wore the colors of dusk. Her ears rang.

Behind her, the house-eater was approaching. It wasn't yet in sight but its footsteps were getting louder and their vibration reached higher into her body. She heard a shrill shouted command from a schoolmate whose face she would never remember. The skullfaced beast was tearing the six-eyed creature in half and tonguing its eyes.

Sakura thought to pick up her bat, and she ran.

Ran. Ran down the street that the skullface had come from, now that its space was free. Past the doctor's office and the styling salon. Breathing hard, deep, legs pumping. The stark concrete bank with men fighting to come through the closed door. Open the fuck up, please, please.

Please, please. Her heart hurt. The nausea stunted her speed and she paced herself, calmed, to correct it. She ran. Leg muscles. Breathing. Good.

Past the law office. Burned. Gone. Covered in brown goop like vomit. Mother and the law assistants. One of them with two legs and a single eye was near the rubble and it gave up its territory to chase her.

Run. Run. Run. Run like Ino.

There was nowhere left to go but out. Her breath, her legs were taking her there. Up the final hill, under the two heavy oak trees and the braided little bridge above them that said "Konoha" and "Welcome" in soft blue.

Sakura kept to the main road for less than a minute, and then hairpin-turned off the road and into the concealing woods. She sought a hiding place. A bubble of protection from the nonstop noise. Something. Soon she decided to climb a tree. Heedless of bugs, for she wouldn't feel them crawling anyway. Heedless of her ruined clothes, for she wasn't going to school today. Even the bat, a hindrance to climbing, she didn't care, she didn't care. Mom, I have really strong arms. I can climb a tree while holding this thing, too.

After another few minutes, Sakura selected a thick branch shielded from the lower levels of the tree and the ground. It was a good hiding spot, if she was playing hide-and-seek, but she wasn't, and it was a dark time now. Ten minutes after she first climbed the tree, it was too dark to see anything outside. No stars. No sounds out here in the woods. Birds silent. She, a complete idiot, outdoors during the dark. She hadn't thought of this at all. Her mother would have been so disappointed.

Ten minutes after she first climbed the tree, the dread and the gagging was catching up to her again. Something like shame was sinking in. She began to bite into the skin of her fingers. She wouldn't notice the bites for several minutes more. In the dark, she could only see the scattered fires in Konoha and faint outlines of lesser darkness given by the firelight. The same firelight gave bare outline to her hands, the branch she lay on, and a few of the taller trees between herself and the town. The sun was covered and the dark time settled in. All else across the land was uninterrupted black for more miles than she could ever run.

There were a total of three fires in the two downtown streets, the lower two in danger of connecting on the roof of the Blue Tavern. She knew where the school was from here, but its area of town was unlit. She heard faraway…crying. Long wails like animals hurting. And gunfire. For a while. She kept biting her hands.

Sakura pulled absently on a lock of her hair and wondered who else in town had ever been outside in a dark time. It seemed only very eloquent book authors and gunmen had done it. Did she know anyone who had? Were any of those such people still alive right now? Who was alive at all? Where did they run? Could the folk in Kumo look out their windows and see the fires to south? The things might go there next. Maybe they had come from there and there was nobody left in Kumo. Or anywhere. Maybe this happened to the whole world at once and only she was left, in a tree, alone.

Less gunfire, now one burst of crushing wood and steel piping. She raised her head slightly at the noise but settled. In her mind and in the village's echoes she might have heard the bear-thing that had destroyed her from the start, pillaging further. The ugly, ugly fucking thing. She really had killed one of them. With her own hands. Like a tough gunman. But why a stupid slug, why didn't she kill that one in her house. Why didn't she shoot properly, when it really mattered. Why didn't her dad come out the window with her?

Why all of this, today? It's a school day. It's time for the science lesson right now. Today she had wanted to go to the bakery and get croissants.

The schoolwork, she thought, it's on my dresser. By the new shoebox. My clothes are filthy, Ino would swear up and down she didn't know me.

Ino, thought Sakura. Ino, said Sakura, I didn't look for you. I left you.

I left you.

Her heart squeezed a second time. Longer. Slower. Worse. She never thought to go get Ino. Or anyone.

Anyone who saw her today just saw her running. She ran out of town and past a hundred people who were about to die, who wailed for help—pathetic, animal voices—who must have thought she was a cowardly, spoiled little cunt like everyone said and why did _she_ get to get away and live. Goddamn her. Goddamn you you little cunt I would throw your life away in a second if it meant my wife and son could get out of here safe. How many people were left to think things like that about her. _Did Ino think that. Did she watch her leave?_

God, please, don't do this to her, save her oh God I didn't even think about her. Ino. She could be dead. No, no no no no, NO! INO!

Sakura slapped her hand over her own mouth. It stung. Then she bit her hands more. Her hands were strong and the skin on them hurt from the strength of her jaw. But she couldn't shout like this. Not in a dark time, when the things might be out wandering. The time when they're normally out wandering. They had come out in broad daylight today. In huge numbers. Nobody and nothing ever said they came in such big numbers. Maybe more would come now that it was dark. Maybe they were like crows coming to a good carcass. Konoha, a carcass.

In a dreamlike way she felt the pinch of her own teeth biting madly down on the sides of her hand. Her teeth were close to meeting through the unfortunate skin. Underneath it, something popped and it felt so strange and sickening that she stopped and held her hands to her chest instead.

High up in the tree, Sakura wept silently, hated herself, shoulders and legs shaking at the thought of people watching her run. It made her want to be dead. She would refuse to think on the fact that she had done it for a long time, but her hands grasped her throat just then. She tried to choke and see if she could make herself dead quickly, quietly. But it hurt. But the pressure felt ugly. But she wanted air too much. So she breathed, jaggedly. She was a coward and a quitter and a virgin and a bitch who abandoned her own mother.

A new noise interrupted her loud gasps and she quieted, mid-breath. A long stone's throw below were footsteps. Someone out walking in the dark. No, running, by the speed of them. Sakura warred with the options of slipping down the tree and begging them to take her with them or staying here and remaining safe.

You'll attract attention, she wanted to call out to them, but didn't. But after gripping the branches and grinding her teeth and thinking _'Just go just go just live,'_ she did begin to descend. This time, she kept a firmer hold on the bat in case she needed to use it quickly. More of them could be out there, anywhere. A dark time is when they always walked around and how many of them were there now? There was no way to know. But she wanted to find the people and run with them, or move somewhere. Just move.

The footsteps drew so near that she froze where she was in the tree with one foot in mid-air and her arms straining to hold her still on the branch. The footsteps sounded like they were coated in heavy boots. They carried things on them that clicked and rattled. One of them dropped a casing of bullets that sang on the ground so loudly she jolted. They'll hear you and they'll come for you, she wanted to shout at them, but didn't. And thank God.

After the men's footsteps came another set, much heavier and faster. There was a sound of heaving breaths that were too loud for a man's lungs. There was a smell like mold, like wet things and fungus. The men she heard running were behind her now but she could hear their sudden shouts and attempts at gunfire. Sakura realized with another squeeze of her sore muscles that the men were firing practice rifles from the school. It is all they have.

Sakura descended the tree again, bat held against her in silence, and walked in the opposite direction from the road. Eyes straight ahead and bat at the ready.

She didn't know what town was in this direction. Or how long the woods would last.

She didn't know what happened to her left shoe, or when she had wet her pants. The air was warming, for it was close to summer, but so much of her was shaking. Like she had exercised very hard. Or run very far.

I don't know where to go. Mom. Mom are you alive. Help me. I'm so scared. Oh God.

I'm scared Ino is dead and I didn't think about saving her. Or you. Mom. I ran right past your work. Oh god. I'm so selfish. I'm a selfish, ugly, angry bitch like everyone says. They say that about me at school sometimes, Mom, I lied to you.

The thing that I hit, t-the slug…I just used m-m-my hands. I broke its whole head…It's gross. Oh geez. Gross. Wanna bath.

The thing that…that got Dad. It…I…

I don't know where to go now. I want to go home. I don't want to do this. Please help me. I want to go home.

Sakura Haruno wiped tears from her eyes, again. More came in their place. Her legs had run too far. Her arms were weak and hands sore. Her hair, a little too long. It got in her eyes. It was filthy now. She had blood-of-wraith on her clothes and halfway up each of her arms. Her steel bat was spattered with nasty red. She wanted to look at something still and unmoving and steady, so she looked at its smooth surface. Undented. It did not feel heavy. Her arms carried it well.

"You're strong, Sakura. You're so strong."

* * *

For four hours, Sakura trekked through the woods in weak daylight—cloudy, but certainly not a dark time—and passed through bare copses and some pleasant fields and one cabin with a mounted flag that perhaps had housed a wildlife scouting center before vegetation began eating its way inside. Its aged and abandoned look bothered her—the thought of something "eating its way inside" bothered her—and she passed it quietly by while thinking about her favorite shoes, and what kind of pie she wanted right now.

After the fourth hour, she came by another town that she might have visited once, or perhaps only recognized from newspapers or her parents' chatter. Iwa. Surrounded by quarries and stone and little hills. Konoha and its neighbors were hundreds of leagues too far south to have mountains, but Iwa had some hills.

Once glance told her that Konoha did not suffer alone. Iwa was ruined. Even their entrance post was half-eaten by fire, and the other half seemed to be just eaten.

But it was quiet and utterly empty.

Sakura was quiet and utterly empty as well. She was too tired and dead for shame, though she'd removed her yellowed underwear some miles back and irritated skin between her legs was the most notable thing she felt at the moment. The very first building she came upon, she tried to enter, but its door was blocked by something on the other side. Unperturbed, she scratched at her crotch listlessly and tried the next-door place. It was unlocked and offered no resistance to her shaking hands. Sakura entered the place—an office maybe, maybe her father would know—and saw an overturned desk, and discolored squares of wallpaper on the wall, telling of framed paintings recently moved. She walked past them. Up the stairs, creaking mildly, to the owners' living area. Past a room devoid of furniture. The building smelled like dust and the antiques of elderly neighbors. The scent was like a real home and it pulled her eyelids down.

The third room was slathered in papers like entire cabinets of it had been dumped here. One corner had a thick ink puddle eating into nearby paper. Paper islands peppered between. Ink wells on the ground. Papers covering everything else such that Sakura could not tell what color the floor was. She lay down on one of the thicker piles and leaned her head into the taller pile next to it. She slept for six hours.

When she woke up and lifted her head slightly and saw herself in a stranger's house in utter silence with the sun lowering into a quiet night, she sat up and began to cry.

She sobbed. She bit the sides of her hands and arms and moaned. She thought of touching herself, for something good, but the thought was fleeting and worthless. Every usual titillating idea was instantly tainted. Everything felt wrong. Everything gone. People gone.

She wanted a phone to call Ino but there was no such thing. She wanted to hold someone or something so she held her bat and curled her legs up near her torso and keened a breathy, long noise into the tops of her knees. She recoiled, like someone was yelling.

"I'm hungry." she said to no one. To herself, maybe. Or the stupid bat. She had eaten breakfast at home today. Bakery-bought bread slices that were oven-toasted and buttered and good brown rice with eggs. Strawberries. Oh, strawberries and their lovely juice. She had a ladies' cookbook in her room and it was probably still there. Sakura was also thirsty. But she wasn't hungry or thirsty enough to resist sleep again.

When Sakura awoke, it was night. The natural dark time. But she was in a house this time.

"I miss you, Mom. I miss you, Ino. Dad. I'm…ahh…" Sakura muttered, this and that, vague phrases to fill a silence. It wasn't a good silence. Frazzled as her mind was, she recognized that a home, a town, the family that might have once lived here, ought not to be so silent. The lack of nearly any sound made everything inside her mind swirl and swirl and fester. If she talked, she could feel…smoother. Steadier.

"So I'm really hungry. I hope the store owners didn't take everything out with them," she said. "Maybe they have fruit trees in their backyard, or a back garden."

They did have a back garden, but it was picked clean. And they did have a food cabinet, and it had a cracked, half-empty jar of pickles inside. Sakura first tried to open the lid. That didn't work. So then she hit it with her hands. The side of the jar broke and it spilled.

"Ow."

Only a couple glass bits got stuck into her hand, but she had felt worse from playground scrapes. It was no trouble to search out tiny bits of glass and pluck them out. Simple first aid was a class she'd excelled in, and fixed lots of other stupid or slow kids' assignments when they didn't work fast enough. Most of the glass had gone to the floor, anyway, so her dirt-stained feet now had dirt and pickle juice on them. She reached down and picked up two of the pickles and crunched. They were…decent. It was plain, home-jarred food, and her mother usually made small feasts for dinner that were better than this. Creamy white sauce on duck with buttered corn or smooth-cut avocado slices. Thick, thick tomato soup. Pies on Sundays, usually, and always fresh water and tea both on the table. She breathed deeply and tasted fifteen years of delectable cooking. Her lips were quivering with a sob that nearly escaped.

She recalled the place had a well out back by the garden and went out there to take a bucket of it. It was halfway filled with sand.

"Oh."

The sight is _absurd._ What stupid person would fill up their free water reservoir with sand? Why? Who the hell did this and why did they deserve to own a home and why hadn't she broken their ugly nose already? Curse them. Damn them for doing this to her.

"I can't believe it," she said to no one. "I can't…I can't…" She swiveled around on a heel and went right back into the house, and shut the door, and went to the pantry again, across the glass on the floor and it hurt and she slammed her fists against the wall and screeched!

"No, NO! NO! I HATE THIS! This can't be real, it's not real, this can't be _right!_ "

The little girl's fists pummeled again and again and she felt the wall bowing under her hand twice before it gave out. She found more areas to punch and punched them more. Her fists screeched painful disapproval and she hated it and screeched louder.

"I don't want to do this! I don't want to do this! I want to go home!"

She found a new spot on the wall and flattened her palms against it. Forward and down went her forehead. BAM, went the wall she smashed her head against.

Twice, again. Bam, BAM. Thoughts and vision were cut down. And then she stopped. She breathed deeper. Slower. A little. She breathed in a few bits of plaster and breathed them out.

In the hole in the wall she'd punched was a pair of dust-smothered shelves. Stocked with six dust-smothered jars.

Jars of peaches. Applies, green and pale red. One more pickle jar, one of diced pear pieces. One that seemed to hold cured meat, or uncooked bacon. Ten littler bottles of plain water. The wife of this family had been fond of canning. She had holiday stores.

"Oh."

Sakura lived here for nine days and called this place The Paper House.

"You guys would love my house," she said to herself on the second day, when she walked around without her dirty shorts on. "I don't even have to cook anything. I have cured ham slices and I don't even have to cook! I can eat breakfast at noon if I want! Ha! Now, if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask me. I'm an excellent provider these days." And so it went.

She found that most of the talking she did was reading the papers aloud, since there were hundreds of them, and she had brought no reading material with her. They were mostly receipts of business, and some letters. She memorized the groceries and carpentry bits and cloth types on them, and the strangers who bought them. Mr. Onoki (one time he bought nineteen rolls of tobacco at once), and Ms. Kurotsuchi and Mr. Akatsuchi. She read an endless lake of papers. And she slept on them.

The next day she went out the front door. Then came back. Then she walked outside, slowly, tiptoeing, watching and listening like rabbits did and heart beating like a rabbit's would. She had put her shorts back on and was slowly padding across the street. To her left was one more pair of villagers' homes and a well-trod path that led under the town archway and a sunny, silent field waiting beyond it. To her right the homes continued briefly and went through an intersection before hitting the shoemaker and smith establishments. They were smokeless and quiet. Bars were nailed over some windows and front gardens stripped.

She looked left and right and left and right and left and saw nothing moving. Not plants, not people, not others. Eventually she had crossed the street to the home opposite The Paper House. The door was locked.

She kept up her back-and-forth watching and slow walking, but stopped in the street. From a stone's throw away a long stripe of dark was visible between door and threshold, the darkness of unlit rooms. Someone had left this door open. Sakura's stomach began to go supernaturally cold. Her fingers wrung and twitched for her mother's hand. Or Ino's hand.

Standing there in the street, she said aloud, "Wh. Who's. There," she said, with a boy's high crack in her voice. Nobody said anything to her.

"Who's there," she said, looking left and right in the street again. Nobody. If there was somebody, or if there was one of the It Men, they would make noise, wouldn't they? Why wasn't her mom here to go in with her? Because she'd left to her die, that's why. That's right. She had done that for real.

Feeling her throat inflate from oncoming tears, Sakura walked forward and pushed the door open with her hand. She jumped back. Great gods, but she felt so cold and quivering inside. She walked in because that feeling was not leaving.

There was a living room immediately there, no foyer or mudroom for shoes and coats and nobody on the couch or in the kitchen beyond that light light where _finally_ her hands desperately found and grabbed the light switch, and the electric ceiling lights came on at once.

There was no one in the open room. There was nothing wrong or disturbed in this room. Except that it was not very well decorated. Or, Sakura thought a moment later, the decorations had all been taken out. The mantel held two face-down photo frames. She approached them and touched them with her fingertips only, still looking around. The frames were empty. The vases were empty and the kitchen was almost bare. The icebox was empty. No jars of flour or sugar or salt. No kept meat and no fruits and vegetables. Someone had taken it all, but they had been very neat about it. Like they had merely moved out, and their town entrance arch had not been burned or bitten by It Men.

She was drifting upstairs, looking sharply this way and that to stay alert. There was nothing at the top of the stairs and the doors upstairs were all open. Breathing too quickly, she approached the first one and found a bathroom. There was toilet roll still left and she grabbed it. The handle over the bathtub was a fanciful silver that didn't match the rest of the décor and she grabbed it and turned.

 _Sssshhhhhh_ went the running water into the bath. Sakura were overcome with goosebumps. It was lukewarm. She tore off her clothes with an animal grunt and bathed. And so, Sakura had her Paper House and her Bath House. The running water stopped working after the eighth day. She still elected to relieve herself in the non-functioning toilet rather than the backyard because she was a homeowner who owned two homes after all, so there.

After the ninth day, the creatures finally appeared during a dark time just after noon. She heard one of them bumping into a house, grunting, and then turning and bumping into another house. Idiot. And too close by. So close.

Once the dark passed, she packed some food into tiny mailing packets she found by the overturned desk up from, and added one water bottle (after downing the other remaining two). She needed to leave. Go. Go. _Go._

She put the bag over her shoulder and left the house. A little sadly. She faced the front of the house for the last time, and then turned to the Bath House a stone's throw from it. The front of the Paper House nearer to the ground had claw marks bigger than her hands running sideways along it and the little front steps, made of stone, had bites taken out of them. Some nasty green fluid had dried not too far away that. Barring all these unfortunate scars, the house was pale blue, its coat of paint a little old and the window trimmings very pretty. A house for a family. What a beautiful house. Her Paper House.

"Thank you, Paper House. Thanks, Bath House." she said. She felt silly about it, but that was fine. Nobody could hear her. And saying it aloud made her feel warmer. "Goodbye, dear. Goodbye!"

Sakura did not see another soul, animal, or stirring thing at all. She left Iwa and walked speedily on the road of its northwestern exit.

Her bat was in her right hand.

* * *

"Excuse me, ma'am."

"Huh? What. You want the ham package? It's four for the pound."

"No, ma'am. Just a question. I'm Sakura."

"Do you even have money?"

"I don't want any of the meat packages. I just want to know about the newspaper you have in this town."

"Uh, Matima's newspaper? Then talk to Matima, he does it right out of his house on Gorin Road."

"I went there, ma'am, he's not home right now. I'm just asking around, okay? I'm not trying to solicit you or get my nose in your business. I just need…need answers."

"O…Okay?"

"So can you tell me about his paper?"

"Uh, it runs ads for the market, mostly. In summer he writes the schedule for the weekend plays, so that's in there too."

"Did it have the news about Konoha in it?"

"Konoha?"

"It's down south from here, the town with the deer farm? Mayor Danzo?"

"Oh, that's the town that got, got burned up a few weeks back."

"Yeah. Did Matima write about that in the paper? Or about Iwa, what happened there."

"Yeah, I mean…some. Some of that stuff's too awful to write about. All the evil wraiths that came at those people. In daylight. I can't imagine."

"And Iwa?"

"Iwa folks just packed up and left, I think. They took their packs and all the lanterns and went north. That was in the last paper."

"They did? They wanted to?"

"Yeah, they had some big vote and everyone decided living a couple days-a-ways from Konoha wasn't a good thing."

"That's…I've never heard of that."

"I've never heard of wraiths in daylight, either, but it just happened. We're doing the same thing, actually. The day after next, I'm packing up all this and going north with everyone else."

"So, are lots of towns doing that?"

"I don't know. I don't know much about any other place but for Iwa and Jytown. Nobody but Matima travels, really."

"But, uh, Matima definitely wrote about Konoha."

"Yeah, I just said."

"So how did he hear about it in the first place?"

"I mean, everyone heard. They had refugees running all over the province."

"They, they had refugees? Really?"

"Yeah, some of them even tried to go right down the road to Kumo, but I guess they didn't know the same thing had already happened to Kumo. Like, just an hour before it got to them! Insane. It's insane. Like hell coming up aboveground. Those things—"

"But they had refugees, people got out?"

"Yeah, some. I don't know how many out of all the people living there, like percentage-wise. And, you know. Lotta people died. Their militia gave up and left them. That was definitely in the paper. 'Cause one of 'em told that to Matima as they came through."

"Who came through? D-Did you see them?"

"Um, I think one family did? I don't know exactly who was interviewed."

"What family? Please! What did they look like?"

"Will you get out of my FACE? Mother of _moons,_ you child. Just don't tell me you're from Jytown and you want to steal Matima's business or something. I'll report you to the militia. And he's damn tired of Jytown idiots stealing headlines when he does good, honest reporting for the town."

"I'm not a _reporter._ I lived in Konoha."

"What?"

"I lived there. I got out. I never saw anyone else get out. I'm trying to find somebody else from there. Anybody. I need to know who in my town made it here and if any of my family and friends are okay!"

"You can't be serious."

"I am. That's where I live. I walked for a week to get here, I've had to sleep in trees and I know I smell bad, I'm very sorry. I'm sorry. Please, just tell me what that family looked like, or, or where Matima is. I'll leave you alone."

"Yes, you fucking will. Take your hand off my table. Off my stand. Get away from me."

"What?"

"If you're not lying to me, you will _not_ touch any of my things again. You had better get right out of here. Quick. Now."

" _What?_ What is wrong with you?"

"If you're from there, you've got their taint on you. Something ungodly. Something awful had to be happening in that town for the wraiths to come down on you like wolves to meat. In the daylight. Six, seven of them! Eating people alive. And if you just brought this evil cloud straight into my butchery stand—"

"That's not what happened at all! We do everything fine. We light the lanterns, we're never on the street when a dark time comes. Never! Konoha did everything _right_."

"I believe in the tragedy of that village more than I do your word, little girl. You're a part of it."

"Will you—j-just—tell me about that family you saw. I'll leave. I swear."

"It was some man with a little black beard and his daughter, I guess. Guy had pointy hair tied up in a tail and a deerskin vest. I'm surprised he wasn't trying to sell his daughter to a brothel, the way the slut dressed."

"Whh—? What was she dressed like?"

"She had a little, little skirt on like some of the young girls do these days, like she's inviting every man around to run up and shove his cock up in her. She came out of that pit-of-sin town so maybe I shouldn't be surprised."

"Was she blonde?"

"Yeah, she was. Your age as well."

"Where did they go? What town?"

"Like I know! Guren said they just bought some damn food and left and good riddance! Pestilence!"

"Thank you. Thank you, ma'am."

"I hope you're done. Get away from me. Plague."

"Have a good evening, _bitch._ Bye."

* * *

At the other end of town was Matima, out of his head from drink or drug. He invited Sakura in to sit on his couch, but he didn't have a couch. But he understood her when she said where she was from, remembered and pronounced her name through his inebriation, and said that he learned of beasts coming from Kumo because a young man named Rock Lee had told him this. And Rock Lee went north. Sakura thanked him and thanked him, unaware that he heard her first exclamation and had fainted by her third.

Sakura walked speedily to Jytown, sweating half the way. She found the two men who made the local paper. She did not speak of Konoha this time, but only of refugees and travelers. They did not know of any blonde refugee girl and her bearded "father". But they knew strangers had come through, looking like the road had treated them badly. The older of the two gave her a free lantern, a skin of cold water and yesterday's bread, and refilled her own bottle besides. They apologized for her treatment in the secluded village of Emmha.

Sakura walked halfway to Moroi, and slept in a maple tree. She hid in a tree once during the day when a very brief dark time came, and a second time when she slept for the night.

 _(Mom, I'm getting really good at tree climbing, it's like I'm a little kid again. And the wraiths are so freaking stupid they never even look up. Every book about them says that, that they're dumb as dirt and don't think to look up or around. I'd rather be up in a tree than on the ground with a freaking lantern.)_

She entered Jaiho and found a spindly young man vainly hauling a cart of furs. He had no strength and he had a hundred potholes and furrows in the road to tread through. Sakura did it for him. The man thanked her with lunch, and the man's wife thanked her with a story of a Konoha refugee, named Hotaro, who perished of illness five days ago. She didn't recognize the name. The wife's friends had talked of seeing strangers from out of town pass through, a blonde girl or young woman, and an older man, perhaps her father. She left their home with her hands and shoulders shaking.

Sakura hitched a ride on the cart the man's cousin owned, and his bay horses trotted her into Gellen Village, where they were hanging a man today. Sakura stayed to watch and wished she hadn't.

She dreamed of it the next night and the night after that, she dreamed her parents ignored her for days, boys at school threw dirt at her and called her a slut, Lee hated her, and that she hung them all out of spite. Her eyes drifted away and she was stunned by the dream. Terrified. She woke up unmoving and almost crying. No one was around.

Sakura pretended to talk to Lee. And Hinata. And then Chouji. Then she pretended that a man from the medicine school asked her to join their ranks and she politely accepted and there were articles about her in the newspaper, because she could perform brain surgeries faster and better than the great Tsunade. She adjusted her voice for each character in the skit. By the time she slept, and then woke, her jaw was sore from all the talking to no one.

The slow and heavy realization came that Ino and Mr. Nara's trail was not as linear as she'd hoped. They seemed to have showed up in some towns but not others. Not Emmhe, but in Moroi, four hours away by a horse's gallop. And not Gellen, the next-nearest place to jump to, six hours west from that, though a nice mailman said that Lee's description sounded familiar. Who knows if anyone she knew had ghosted through Iwa like she had. Who knows if other people would curse and repel her for bringing news of the dark time creatures appearing in searching for them was exhausting. Imagining where Ino's real father was, or Shikaku's real son, was exhausting.

She no longer cried at night, but she did curl herself up tightly and hold herself, and talk quietly. Her own hands were warm. She pretended she was eight and held Ino's hand in the classroom and that she would soon go to lunch and then have math time, and then go home to her parents. And sleep in her real bed with her fluffy pillows and warm, warm sheets. Not a haystack or a barn or a gods-damned tree. Today, it was a barn. But the grain sack was hardly a pillow.

In a fit of spite, Sakura asked for work in this new town, Moroi (no sign of any refugees) so she could afford to sleep on a real, soft mattress, and buy her own food like a grown woman would. The grocer had her carry bags into people's carts and take heavy loads from one end of the rear storage room to the other. She sweated and she sighed, but later she bathed and she ate and bought her own salted meat and fresh vegetables, like a grown woman would. She took that satchel of food and slept in a barn with a real mattress and pillow. And cows.

She found a book in a trash bin once, about penguins on the southernmost continent, and read it in two nights. And lots of nights after. She hadn't read a book in…weeks. The quiet focus was refreshing. And now she was exceptionally knowledgeable about penguins.

Sakura left Moroi after two days. The grocer owner thanked her and she embraced him before leaving. "If you need a job again, you come back here! Bright crossing! Good luck, my girl!"

She paid for a ride to Saffur in a cheap two-horse carriage, yellow and ugly but allegedly designed for passenger transport. She'd never heard of that town before, couldn't find it on the map she'd purchased.

The carriage driver lied. There was no town called Saffur.

* * *

"You have really pretty hair, miss. How'd you make such a color, eh?"

A second man had mysteriously appeared and pointed a gun at Sakura's head. He could see her bat sticking out of her bag, but she couldn't move fast enough to grab it and attack before he twitched his index finger and ended her life.

"It's not a fake color. I was born with it looking like this."

"That's fascinating. I've gotta have you checked, still, it's the policy. If it's real, you'll be a real gem. They might upgrade your quarters just for that. Are you a virgin, too?"

Sakura's fingers twitch in a simmering rage that she would be made to feel both danger and embarrassment at the same time. The man didn't care at all. For all the damage, all the anger she'd felt, this had never happened before. This blatant…indifference to her modesty. Men laughing at her. It felt like so long since people had laughed at her. She blinked constantly, pushing down tears.

He swayed a little with the movement of the carriage. "I asked a question. Are you a virgin or not. We can get that checked, too, if you're not gonna say."

Revolting. The carriage hit a rock and both of them swayed. The strange man blatantly stared at her breasts bouncing with the motion and it made him smile. Sakura shuddered and thought about how close her bat was. If he didn't have a gun her fists would do the job. Break his ribs and hear him cry. Push him out the door. Anything. Get him away and make him stop making fun of her.

"If you _check_ me I will pull your eyeballs out of your head."

"Yeah, I bet. I'm sure your daddy tells you you're a _tough_ girl. I'm gonna assume yes if you're so gods-damned fussy about it. You know, once you've had a man in you, your attitude really loosens up. Girls always calm down after they get married. There's books about it."

The driver banged his hand against the front wall of the carriage. "Hidan, you didn't even pack any lanterns! The storage box is empty!" he shouted.

Her captor kept his eyes on her, but tilted his head back towards the wall. "I had to put 'em around the cage, idiot! It's not an even an hour's ride to the site, so hurry up."

"You didn't leave us any fucking lanterns?! Hidan?!"

"There won't be a dark spot, don't worry about it, I can always feel 'em coming. We're good."

"If one happens, I'm taking a horse and I'm leaving you. I don't give a damn. This creepshow can rot, and you can rot." The driver whipped the horses' hindquarters. One skittered and two brayed loudly, and then both pairs heaved the carriage to double its speed.

The bumpy road and the desperate ride made Sakura and Hidan both shake in their positions. His eyes crept up and down, up and down, constantly pausing on her breasts until she finally put an arm over them at a harsh bump, and a harsh jerk from the right-side horse. This only brought a bigger smile from him. She couldn't stand it any longer.

"Why did you take your lanterns out of the carriage?" she asked him. With one slit of anger she added, "That's a stupid thing to do."

The pause from him was a taunt, an acknowledgment, an understanding that she was just desperate and he had all the time to time he wanted to wait and watch and frighten her. He waited till this was too blatant to bear. "We need 'em down the road. You'll see."

"Maybe you're just a freak and you wanna get eaten. You pretend to forget lanterns 'cause really you wanna commit suicide."

It actually made him laugh. "Good god. You're such a drama queen. Did Daddy ever say that to ya?"

In the middle of the word "queen" the driver knocked to grab their attention again. "Almost there, tie her up!"

"I've got a gun on her, she won't do anything."

There was no truth and no convenient lie with which to counter. And her mind was empty of any other distractions. She sat still and tiny rivulets of sweat began to dribble down her back and underarms. While her mind struggled to remain indifferent and blank, an undercurrent of desperation for Ino fought its way to the surface still. Ino would know how to handle unpleasant men. Ino might even have shared her knowledge on how to deal with unpleasant men, but Sakura could not remember. She sat still and let sweat collect all over her.

In the midst of the sweating and grinning, the carriage began to slow. The driver eased the team to an abrupt halt at the last moment, jerking the two passengers a last time. Hidan's gun remained trained on her still.

The carriage wiggled on its right side as the driver dismounted from his seat and plodded back to the passengers' door. Sakura's eyes made a frantic contact with the opening door and the man behind it: a blonde in a grey vest that Sakura found quite fashionable, if the man hadn't spilled something blue or purple on the front. A dark time was coming soon and she couldn't make out the color for sure. He maintained eye contact long enough to make a face at her hair and then looked away.

She looked in all directions of this new place and set to memorizing the placement of things as classwork had always instructed. This was a large farmhouse with much of the forest around it quickly and clumsily cleared; jagged-toothed tree stumps surrounded much of the property, except where a large fenced acreage for livestock, and except for a hole in the ground in front of it the size of her house. She saw carved spikes sticking up out of it; but there was no sound or movement coming from it. Hidan was laughing at something. No sunlight was brightening the property or coloring the house. In between the carriage ride and Sakura's exiting it, the sun had begun to cover up; a dark time was coming in a few minutes. Had they any wisdom, the men would be telling gathering inside the house and putting a lantern by the door.

His gun prodded her in the back. "Inside, girl, time to shower."

It was a word she hadn't said in a few weeks. She said it aloud, stunned.

"Yeah, _shower_ are you deaf? Go on!"

The man in the vest came back from the house's porch, arms laden with heavy black books. "How many of these did you even get, Hidan? There's only enough room in the circle for six wives." Another man came from the house's front door and slammed down the steps in heavy, clattering boots. He pointed at the other two standing in the grass and began shouting in a foreign tongue heavy with _sk_ and _sh_ noises. Hidan and the book man responded to the foreign statements in her own tongue, arguing about circles and fitting in the circle and taking new wives for someone. Jashin or Islo. It made her skin crawl and her eyes dart—Hidan, shouting, loaded gun, old house no one could find her—and there was no way of knowing what they would do next, if they would shoot.

All three of them were blocking her way to the front door. They wanted to steal her and make her someone's wife. Would they "check" her inside that house? Who else was in there? There could be more men and more guns. Sweat was gathering under her arms with the mere thought of a person holding a gun up to her instead of up to one of the creatures. No gunmen was supposed to do that.

Sakura remained still. She tried to be still when the vested man clapped a hand onto her shoulder and pulled and pinched to try and make her move. "Our business is the ritual inside, girl. We're not presenting you to Jashin in these shitty clothes!"

"I don't want to," she said hollowly.

He pulled harder and yanked her forward a step. "I said go, you dumb bitch." Sakura tripped in the grass to catch herself, failed, and fell onto her side. The ground was hard and hurt like it bore a grudge.

Sakura heaved heavy, hurt breaths and tried to push herself up onto one elbow. Looking up again, she could see between the old man and the vested man clear across the property, where the stumps ended and untouched trees stood like a thick army. There was nothing but unbroken shadow between them. The open space where they stood was already dark as dusk.

The foreign man whispered something.

"No, they'll think her hair is, like, bloodstained, we gotta keep this one. She'll be the seventh wife. First in line is the fat one."

The foreign man said something else, louder.

"Like hell you will, Islo! Oldest priest, my ass!"

"If she's not a virgin, then I'll take her to my group, it's fine. Could start a new harem—it's dark. Whoa, it's coming fast."

The men were mockeries to real gunmen, mockeries to whatever they thought they were. Inside the house was a stash of six women, showered and well-dressed and peering out the windows at a seventh on the ground by the porch. Sakura gagged and wished she could run.

"I'm not gonna be able to put the horses away before it goes full dark!" Vest-man cried.

"Leave 'em, they know how to stand still."

Hidan jumped over Sakura and climbed the three porch steps. He set the gun against the wall of the house and picked up a match to light two lanterns sitting by the door.

Old Priest Islo crouched down, too, and dragged Sakura by her wrists. He was pulling her up off the ground like a trophy stag. He had a thick black beard and she could only just see him. The women in the window were clearer. Two as old as her mother, one old as Kiba's sister, one totally nude. Perhaps the nude one was being checked too. Perhaps she was a wife already. She looked bored, and scornful. Sakura, forced to stand now, made a decision. It didn't matter who saw it.

She dug her foot into the porch step and pulled her wrists back. Islo grunted when he felt her fight and he pulled too, but his arms shook. Sakura's arms shook, too. But she pulled with her legs and refused to let him have her arms. She pulled Islo down two steps with her, their shoes clapping on the wood. The only light left outdoors was Hidan's lamplight. She knew what to do with her elbows.

When she pulled hard enough, Islo fell towards her, and her right elbow was ready. She swung it left, aiming for his cheek, and hit near enough to her mark to count. Her elbow pushed into the side of his neck and he was knocked off balance. He started coughing.

It had only been a few precious seconds since he'd started pulling her at all, and the man in the vest finally noticed. He dropped all his books onto the porch and their many pages fluttered. Sakura pointedly avoided looking at him and aimed a second strike with her left fist, going downward, and she hit somewhere in the area of Islo's collarbone. It was almost too dark to see. But something made a _crack_ noise. When she turned around, she caught one swift glimpse of Hidan grabbing for his gun. One of the indoor women yelped in surprise. Sakura took three long strides to get to the carriage. Only its yellow paint made it visible now. She could see the outline of its side door and the different pattern against the outer wood. With one jump, legs pulled up and arms in, as much as she could manage, she leapt for the passenger's seat.

The jump was not accurate and the bottom of the carriage floor cut against one shin and the other ankle. The carriage swayed on its axles from her impact. The steel bat flopped off the opposite seat where Hidan had sat and held her at gunpoint and clattered onto the floor by her right elbow. The two horses did not utter a sound.

Pulling on the edge of the nearby seat, Sakura heaved herself forward into the carriage till her legs and feet were fully inside. Then she flopped onto her back and stared out the open door. Hidan was crouched on one knee in the threshold of the front door, gun trained on her and his eyes bulging. The lamp lit up his bared teeth.

' _You won't shoot. There's no way you'd shoot.'_ Sakura thought in rapid-fire words. Her heart was racing, she panted and could not catch her breath. _'If any of them are around, they'll come if you shoot. You better know that. You better know that—'_

Outside it was perfect dark. The carriage interior was now all shadow, the landscape unknown. Hidan remained stone-still in the doorway, but for his shaking hands. There was no following her outdoors in a dark time. She was not worth the danger. But he was brimming with rage from her escape attempt and she was worth throttling and breaking.

He was mouthing word that moved his lip in a _ray_ or _bray_ motion but there was no telling which word of breaking or raping or anything else that he meant to say.

' _I hope you get shot and die,'_ Sakura sniped in her mind. She scowled at him and let him read her own hate in her eyes. The book-bearing man tried to pull his companion into the door, but Hidan could not move.

Sakura's mind was traveling back to Konoha and how quickly she had run then, how quickly she'd thought and decided things. She tried to squeeze back into that time now. She had to move.

In her own bag was her little lantern, still with oil that Miss Musashi had supplied her. She plucked the matches from the inside of the bag, too, and lit one. One touch of the match brought the wick to life and brought a soft orange glow to the carriage and her own body. She put the half-moon metal handle into her mouth, and stood up. Feet on the edge of the carriage door's threshold, head and shoulders up and out of the threshold, and her arms on the carriage edges to balance her there. Her left hand found the storage ring on the roof where the driver kept the lash.

"You're not," rasped the vest-man from the door. Hidan's grinding teeth were audible. Sakura ignored them and looked to the side to properly grab the lash. The thin end was nearest to her, so she leaned far over to grab the fat end from the opposite site, and pull from there. She pulled in tiny increments to minimize any scraping sounds. They were the only noise in the dark around them. Hidan, the women in the windows, and the horses were all quiet.

In ten seconds, Sakura had finally pulled the whip out of the metal ring. The next steps would be complicated. The whip, the horses, her lantern, her bat and the crazy men in the doorway must all move or be silent as she required them. The plan was set, but could be crushed by anything, and there was only a fraction of the adrenaline in her that she'd had the day Konoha was ruined. Only a picture in her mind of Hidan pulling her into the front door kept her moving.

Hidan was moving, too. Outside of her vision he had stepped out onto the porch, gun raised high and his animal teeth still bared to her. The first porch step creaked, and the two of them looked each other in the eye again. Sakura broke the gaze first.

She leaned forward over the open carriage door, towards the horses. She slapped the whip lightly, feeling no impact, saying, "Ha!"

Hidan was close. "You try—I'll rip your guts out. Bitch. Don't—"

Now the carriage leaned as Sakura leaned even further, pushing her weight towards the front and right side. She slapped the whip again. "Ha! HA! Go!"

One of the horses snorted and stepped forward. The carriage jolted as one pulled and the other was moodily dragged. Two of the window women slapped their hands on the glass but none of the others dared to break their gazes from the moving carriage. Hidan's feet danced and twitched. He was out of reach of the lamplight now and his fellow priests could no longer see him. He could no longer see the escaping girl, either, only her lamp that she held out of the open door. The horses' trot was picking up.

"Thieving bitch!" came to Sakura on the wind, but she would not look back. Hidan pivoted on one heel and returned in time to hear the door creaking shut, pulled by the gasping, broken Islo.

The thieving bitch rode away. She held the lantern as high as she could manage out the open carriage door and sweated fresh stains into the underarms of her shirt. The horses were cantering now and there wasn't a spare second that wasn't filled with their hard, iron thumping on the ground or the metal bits of their tack jostling around.

' _I AM a thieving bitch,'_ she thought, shivering. _'I might die. I might—just let me through. Just stay away from my lantern. Please just stay away.'_

Could the horses see through the unnatural dark? How long until they hit a tree? How long until one of them came from the trees and attacked? She was a stupid bitch, cowardly bitch. There were other women in that house who were going to be slaves to insane _husbands_ and she left them to that fate. She lad _left them._

' _I don't wanna think about it,'_ she thought, biting her lips. She wanted to speak, expel this ugliness in her, but it could not be moved till the dark time was over and it was safe to make noise. The wind whipped hair from the side of her head over her eyes, and then back. The horse on the left snorted again. They were moving in sync now and the pulling on the carriage itself felt evened out. Still, they hadn't run into anything. The steel bat rolled around and was kept inside only by her repeatedly kicking it backwards when it rolled too close to the open door.

Three more minutes passed. Greenery around her pushed forward out of the black. Green blurs and brown stripes of tree trunk silhouettes appeared, then their full shapes came into focus as the sky opened again and returned daylight to them. Sunlight returned, warmth on her skin returned. At last she could feel the discomfort of sweat again. And she was free to make noise.

"Made it," Sakura murmured to herself. But murmuring was nowhere near enough. She inhaled deep and: "I _made_ it! I did! Stupid jashin-bastards!" A few more nonsense syllables came out, and then giggles. They drained away, too. Now there was only wind and horses' hooves.

Hidan and his strange priests were behind her, but she wasn't done moving yet. She wouldn't be finished for the day until there was decent shelter over and around her. And there was no indication that Hidan didn't have spare horses with which to give chase. Sakura scowled and looked around: most of the trees were on the left side of the path, with open space and at least one far-off farm field to the right. Hidan had chased her for less than fifty feet and that was more than enough for her. But she would have to move for a long time to be sure he wouldn't be following.

Almost from the moment she'd hopped into the carriage, Sakura had been standing up, feet on the edge of the doorway, clinging to the top of the doorway, and the door itself swung wide open and smacking against the carriage's outside. There was maybe, perhaps, a better way to ride.

She shouted an assortment of commands for "stop" for three or four minutes until the horses heard or cared to obey. She stopped near the low point of a valley with new wheat plants rising up between the hills. Here, she hopped out of the carriage, grabbed her bag, and then walked around to the front of the carriage. Up one, two, three steps till she made it to the driver's seat, a wooden bench that seated two. This was where the man in the vest had sat while he chastised Hidan for not bringing lanterns on the ride. Hidan was a stupid bitch, too.

"Oh, wait," she murmured, and turned in the seat. She'd left the passenger door open. By leaning over the edge of the bench, she could reach the door with her right foot, and kicked at it until it swung back and locked in place.

"Okay. Okay," she said, and secured her things. Ready to move. Class exercise complete and she would have gotten a good grade on it. Surely. She would have to, right? She'd executed her plan without a hitch, really. Excelled, as usual! Sakura bit her lip again and said in her mind many times that she would deserve a full mark on it. She said "ha" again to make the horses move. She was driving. She was just old enough to drive, she remembered. Less than a year from marriageable age, too. But when the word _wife_ threatened to appear in her mind, she gasped aloud and recoiled. She fidgeted in the driver's seat and watched for anything coming from the sides of the road.

Sakura drove through the next town, an hour's ride from where she had changed seats. She ignored the people around her, the cows lining the west side of the roads, and the man who screamed at her to try and sell her a factory-fresh wheel axle for the carriage. Three other carriages were winding up the hill out of town and she passed each one. She passed a second town, counted her money on a long, boring stretch, and evening fell.

Where am I going, said a Sakura-like voice in her mind, and it said it again two more times, and then repeated itself every minute thereafter. A scattering of orange lights down the hill showed a third town since Hidan and his men, and she did not want to ride through the night. She did not want to see Hidan ever again. She did not want to be a wife or have men yell at her like she was a grown woman with money and she did not want to be here at all, alone on the road like some failed carnie, but she did want a bed. That was worth pursuing, probably.

Sakura stopped the carriage, and directed the horses to walk into a field along the roadside. There she unhitched them, and slapped the hindquarters of the left horse. It nickered and trotted gaily away from her to a patch of grass nearer the road. The other still wore its bridle. It hung its head dumbly and it waited. She patted its side and back smoothly and waited several minutes. It began to graze eventually.

She heaved up onto its bare, brown back and it did not appear disturbed. She heaved one leg over the side and clutched at the mane and yelled "ha" half a dozen times till it moved. And so this one became her indifferent steed and the carriage was left by the road. Eventually, she left this horse, too, before she was within sight of any of the town's buildings. She walked a wide arc around the main roadway, observed its main street from two different streets that intersected it, and found a hotel that looked too expensive for a teenage girl by herself. She still had money from Moroi and could afford one night. The clerk did not make any face or comments at her. The room was clean. The room had running water and electricity until 9pm but no phone lines. Her bag was on the floor. One of her shoes was tossed across the room. Her face was buried in some strange pillow that smelled clean and fake and she was crying.

"Mom, Mommm." the voice that was almost like hers wailed. Tears had dribbled down her cheeks and were caught on her lips, nearly dripping into her mouth or on her chin. "I wanna go home. Mom. I hate this! I hope Hidan fucking dies! I hope he dies! And I never see him again."

Sakura nuzzled into the blankets and her moans and hisses fizzled into the cloth. Her head was hurting and she had no medication for it. One of her feet had a cramp in it, too, and hadn't she walked quite a long way to earn it? How far was Konoha from here? Two hundred miles? Three? A month and a half since she'd left home, or maybe more than that. Taking laborer's work and sleeping in barns and trees, bathing with handfuls of river water and skinning rabbits. She was living some wild, nonsense life out of a novel, but it never stopped. It just kept going. Only today had a real person turned a gun on her. Nobody had ever done that—nobody _should—_ she tried to imagine how horrified she would be, how quickly she would be pissing her pants if one of the gunmen in her own town used a gun on a person instead of on one of the It Men.

Without her permission, a picture was conjured up in her head of Hidan finding her, finding this very room and shooting her and making fun of her again, "Dumb slut thought you could steal my things," and then he laughs at her because he doesn't care at all. He shoots her like she's a sick animal and he means to eat her flesh. He'll put his thumbs into her eyes so that she cries and can't see before she dies. Sakura covered her eyes to protect them, but her mind kept running. He'll try to have sex with her when she's almost dead and blind and pump her full while she screams because it hurts, it stings so much and she can't cover up a pain that happens inside her and then she'll die.

Great god. Did she really escape him? Was he on foot right now, sprinting down the hilly roads to Yuraka Town and ready to find her hotel? Maybe not. Maybe he was fine with the other six women and losing a whole carriage was just whatever.

Maybe he'd get cancer or something. Maybe he'd get killed by one of the It Men in a dark time, since he was such a stupid bitch, he'd probably bang pots and pans together thinking it would make rain fall and then he'd get smacked into a pancake on the ground and eaten, as he deserved.

He should die. She felt in the barest honesty that she wanted him erased from the living world. He deserved to just _die._

She wouldn't die but he would die, please god, make him die and go away. Go away.

These thoughts of wishing death on someone did not fit naturally in her mind. But lately things like that were there a lot. She flushed them out. She thought about croissants. Books.

Good books. Books. When would she ever wear a fine dress and read a book in the sun? That sounded good.

Good. Would be good. Hidan. No.

It was after midnight now and she'd bathed and shaved and made herself clean and soft but everything inside her was still a series of thorny cramps, unwilling to loosen. Yuraka Town, her buzzing brain thought. Yuraka Town made a lot of windows and stained glass. Toilets and sinks, too. So a lot of people who build things. Maybe she could...look around tomorrow. Ask about Konoha. This place looked like it had never heard of Konoha, or the things attacking in plain daylight, or anything that could hurt them.

I want to go home, is a thought that passed across her consciousness again and again. She wanted Mom. And Ino. And a home with no Hidans and no evil men who kept women in a house for Jashin rituals allowed in, ever. But this was all there was. This day-to-day thing, having to earn money at random jobs like an immigrant or a drifter, that pretty idea of studying very important books and attaching things like "Doctor" and "Mrs" to her name is gone. Her home is just in her bag and in her head. Just me, now.

It's just this or I starve and Mom will never find me. These thoughts have no right to poison and ruin her so, but she can't escape them. They can only exist inside her head, but lo, so must she.

Sakura found her bag in the peaceful dark and dug out a match to light the room's lamp, and the book about penguins. She read aloud, slowly and enjoyed hearing her own voice a bit, seeing her own hands on the page and hearing her own familiar voice and pressing her skin against the soft blankets to know that she was still here and she would be well.

* * *

The next day, she slept in. Sunlight always drove Sakura to action and movement, but she turned her back to the light in the window and kept her eyes closed, not even dozing, but perhaps resting. After yesterday, the rest felt necessary. Not since leaving Konoha had she really felt an experience that peeled something away from her and left her weaker than before.

To wake up and stand up and go outside would be to potentially face more Hidans. There _were_ Hidans out there who threatened girls and pointed guns at other people, and life wasn't all that fair anyway, so she probably would end up meeting more of them before she got to find Ino. What would she do then? Threaten to shoot them, too? They never said that in class. Even in camping exercises, being attacked by other people never happened. So much that she wanted to say _never happened_ or should _never happen_ but here she is in a strange bedroom over a hundred miles from home and she will never be a doctor or have a house. Until she finds Ino. Maybe.

Sakura rose out of bed and pushed off the edge so she could take a shower, even though she took one just about twelve hours ago. She wanted the warm water. She washed her hair again even though she just did that twelve hours ago. She pocketed the extra soap bar the hotel staff put on the sink counter.

"I could change. I mean, I really ought to change," she said to herself, observing her green top. This and her new pants were lifted from The Bath House, was not all that attractive in the first place, and it had holes in it now.

"I can...buy some new clothes. But meals first. And then I'll get work later today. If I do some lifting or loading work tonight, I should buy—" And thus she planned. She planned the day aloud for a good fifteen minutes. Then she swung her bag onto her shoulders and left the nice hotel, taking the two free bread rolls from the common area before going outside. Nowhere near as good as croissants.

Outside it was nearly lunchtime, and there were plenty of people to talk to and lots of sun shining down on fluffy-haired heads and fancy hats. Yuraka Town was enjoying a fun spring fashion trend of curve-brimmed hats, especially wide-brimmed ones for women. Sakura liked the look of them and even tried one on at the clothing shop. She came away with one or two new everythings, ready to replace things that were stained by a month of sweat. The last of her money could buy her a cheap dinner if she didn't get work today. But the first work to be done was surveying work. Hunting down the truth work. This was it now. This was what she had been doing for weeks before. Just. Do it more.

She walked, and enjoyed the walk. She wasn't sure if the place had a city council building, but surely they'd have a courthouse. And she'd strike there if the townsfolk didn't all recognize Konoha and its people and label them a curse. Three streets down from her hotel, there was a town square with a pretty white fountain in the center, and many curved benches for people to sit and talk. One man was playing a flute-like instrument while passersby dropped cents into his instrument case. Sakura approached one of the listeners, an older gentleman with graying hair, and tapped his shoulder.

The "Excuse me? Hi, I'm a bit new here, could you help me with something?" line was one she'd tried before and it had success with men. A lovely-lady smile must have given the man just the right impression.

"Hello, I'm looking for some people here in town. Do you know if anybody from Konoha came through here recently? Or Kumo?"

"Oh, I'm not sure. Never heard of Konoha, where's that, dear?"

Next, she went a little ways across the square and found two women, one with a baby on her hip and the other writing in a notepad. "Hi there, could I ask you two a quick question?" The notepad-scribbler gave her full attention to the stranger, the baby-carrier looked far less enthused to be interrupted. "Do you two live here? I was wondering if anybody from Konoha or Kumo came through here. Refugees, you might say."

"Refugees?" the baby-carrier said with a series of alarmed blinks. "From what?"

"Was that the place where they had that awful fire? Oh, I read they drained the whole lake to put it out and their park has no lake anymore, and right before spring festival! Talk about unlucky."

Next, she found a man with his son who had visited Kumo years ago, but had never been to Konoha. And he hadn't seen either town mentioned in the newspaper since last year. Next, she found two men lugging boxes off of a donkey cart, and one of them knew nothing and the other one ignored her. She returned for the town square for a while and claimed a bench for herself and slugged off her bag, letting it barely be attached to her around one arm. The flute man was still there, and she listened to his songs and the fountain rushing, rushing. The Yuraka people didn't sit down for long. Strangers came and went in duos and hordes and Sakura eventually decided that the male iteration of the popular spring hat was ugly.

The sun would set soon. The courthouse was full up and busy, but there was a council building, and a young male receptionist who paid rapt attention to her from the moment she walked in. "Would you know if the council has dealt with any refugees lately? From Konoha, to the south?"

"The council hasn't talked about refugees in years. But I now Mr. Yarga helped some people from the south somewhere. This weird couple, he let them stay the night in his shed when there was a bad storm out and he said they came from the south, thought they were homeless folks." She asked for an audience with Mr. Yarga, could she visit him at home, even, and the receptionist laughed and showed his teeth in a grin and said, "Well sure. I can get him in ten minutes, sweet."

She waited at the front desk and tapped her fingers on the wood. When he came back from a hallway behind the desk, he had removed the outer shirt to his outfit that left him in a striped blue tunic with short sleeves and a low neck. He asked Sakura smooth, curious questions about her hometown and what she did there, and she answered each question with exponentially louder growls in her voice. Mr. Yarga came from the back hallway and interrupted the receptionist's question about dinner.

Mr. Yarga was young to be attached to any kind of council, and wore glasses that could have easily attracted school bullies were he ten years younger still. He rushed out from the hallway, ushered Sakura in with three strong waves of his hand, and rushed back. She nearly jumped around the receptionist desk to chase him. Mr. Yarga closed the door behind her and sat down at a desk weighed by papers and paperweights.

"You're from Konoha." he stated. His mouth was parted just slightly, his eyes wide.

"Yes. It's my hometown. I—"

"Did that really happen?" he asked, and almost in the same breath, "Tell me what happened. To...confirm. What I heard before."

If he wanted information, he would likely pay it back out in return. The desperate, hunted-deer look in his eyes assured her so. She told him what had happened. She told him that in the first week of April, wraiths had attacked in daylight and she had seen one trying to eat a house. She told him everything. She paused. Her eyes darted and she knew she looked like a little girl. But Mr. Yarga looked like a little boy, with wide eyes and sitting at rapt attention for her. The story took nigh on ten minutes.

She told him she was looking to connect with her remaining friends and family. "Or anybody." she said. "Anybody I know. My friend, Ino Yamanaka, she's a blonde girl my age, I'm trying to find her. Did you let her sleep in your garden shed?"

The councilman was staring at her still and clinging to his armrests. A bird chirped loudly outside his window. "No. Not a blonde girl. A b-boy. Your age. His name was Lee—"

Lee's heavenly grin erupted in her mind. Sakura erupted. "Lee? You saw Rock Lee?!" Yarga's hands twitched on the armrests as she leaned over closer to him. "Was he all right? What happened to him? Tell me where he went! Please."

In seconds, her heart was beating so strongly she felt its pulse bulging in her throat. The seconds wherein she waited for Yarga to collect himself made Sakura grind her teeth. "His name was Rock Lee. Yes. And he was with a woman named...Kurenai?"

Miss Kurenai, a grade school teacher. "She got out, too." Her heartrate was only increasing and great god, she loved it. Lee and Miss Kurenai, here. Here and sheltered and okay.

"I don't know where they were going," Mr. Yarga told her, "they said they wanted to settle somewhere far. They told me what happened. They asked about other refugees, too."

"Oh. Oh." Sakura said. Her fingers grasped vainly at her own chest and shoulders.

"But this attack. This. The—the beasts that attacked your town. Please. I'm begging you to tell me the truth." The councilman paused and took in her nod. "Were you performing some sort of, of rituals? Were they killing people in there? Young girls? What...what happened? To bring them to you?"

So easily he stepped on her father and everyone else. She wanted to shout. But this was so important. Her voice still came out louder than she meant: " _Nothing_. I swear to you. We light our lamps like anyone else, we're quiet during any dark times. There was no reason for it. None that I know of. I—I don't know." She huffed out an unpleasant laugh. "A few years ago my mom told me that one came in to town when I was a kid, and that it was happening more than it used to. I don't know. After...after it, I went to this town called Emmha. Some refugees went through there before me. They said the things had gotten to Kumo, too, they'd been there first. I've been there lots of times. I don't believe they were doing anything either. We didn't do anything wrong."

The councilman's brows had pushed together as her weak explanation tumbled out and he looked like he might sob, as Sakura was starting to. "A woman there called me a plague. But I didn't do fucking anything to deserve this. Nobody did. I was supposed to go to school that day."

No birds were left on the tree. The silence in the office began to stretch. Yarga had nothing to say about the fact that she should have been in school. But his silence relented eventually. "How'd you get all the way here? If you ran? You got a ride somewhere on the way?"

"How'd I get here," Sakura said, laughing again, and then shivered. She did not belong in any of the places she'd crossed to get here. "Like. Walking. Most of the time. I asked people for rides in wagons sometimes." Hidan came into her head again. She had asked someone for a ride and had met him. "I stole a two-horse carriage from an insane priest the other day."

"The Jashinists?"

"Wh—yeah. Yeah, they said 'Jashin' a lot. How'd you know?"

Now Yarga began scraping at the armrests with his index and middle finger. It squeaked. Sakura stubbornly looked away and wouldn't let her irritation come out of her mouth. "Well. They've done some shit lately. But not my jurisdiction, not my problem." Squeeeeeaak. "And you. The thing that happened to you. And Konoha and Kumo. It's ungodly. And...it's not the first time I heard of that happening."

Squeeeeeak. "This, this happened to another town? When? I've been to every town from Konoha to here. Nobody ever said that."

"It was a long time ago. Eight or nine years, I think. I don't know where it happened. But it was another refugee. He came from way west of here, and he said he was trying to go east, get as far away as he could till he hit a coast. We gave him shelter in a hospital room for two nights. And then he went. And we voted not to tell folks about what he said. And I'm thinking hearing this story twice in a lifetime is too much." He paused to take a quaking breath. All of him was starting to quake. "That man was from a long way away. But, but Konoha, or Kumo? I could get there if I wanted to. That's close. Great god, that's too close." He stood up and the chair _sqUEAKed._ "I'm leaving. I can't live near that. Two towns, in a day. If it's coming closer, something's started, it's—I can't!"

Yarga bolted up and his calves knocked his chair backward. He darted from his desk to a tall wooden cabinet against the nearest wall. There was sweat glimmering on his neck as he yanked the topmost cabinet door open. He grabbed two handfuls of neatly packed papers and threw them onto the ground. Sakura's brows quirked up and sheets drifted her way, but she could think of nothing to say now. The first thing to come to mind was Lee. This outburst was so uncomfortable, but she could make it tolerable by comparing it to him, to his energy. His voice was fresh and loud in her ears now as it was the day she'd last seen him. "GOOD MORNING SAKURA! Will you come see the play with me on Friday? PLEASE SAKURA?" Mr. Yarga's assault on the cabinet contents froze and Sakura's eyes returned to him. In her mind's eye, she saw Lee running down the shopping street and she ran after him, yelling.

The man looked tongue-tied, so she took the quiet opening in his stead. "Tell me what you remember about Lee and Kurenai. When did you first see them? When did they leave?"

"They were at Fountain Square two weeks ago. Asked for the police and I took 'em home instead. I woke up and they were gone." He held two sheets of paper out to her, held together by a plastic paperclip. "Here. You can have a ticket."

Her hand grasped the papers and she immediately grimaced. "To...the northern continent?"

"Getting the hell out of here. You deserve to get out too, so there, free ticket. Get safe. I'm going tomorrow." Some of the papers in his other hand spilled out and he dropped to his knees to snatch them up and crush them against his abdomen while his hands snatched more.

He stood up fast as a startled mouse. "It's...it's almost six." Across the square, the wooden clock tower confirmed this. It would chime very soon. What papers he had, he pressed close to his chest. "I've got to go. I can make the boat tonight! I've got to GO!"

Councilman Yarga stepped onto his office chair and leaped over his desk; his guest yelped and scrambled to be out of the way of his legs. One foot kicked at Sakura's arm as he came down. He caught his balance and then bolted at the same time Sakura's side struck the west wall. Councilman Yarga's yell kept on as he opened the door with a barely-free hand and faded away as he ran down the hall. The receptionist called out in alarm and knocked something wooden over as his boss passed him. Sakura pushed off from the wall, panting.

Out in the lobby, the receptionist was panting and staring, too, and set about stacking papers and locking drawers to close his post for the day. Soft clinking and tapping noises provided background noise to the close shifting sounds of young Sakura trying to avoid the many sheets of paper on the carpet. They were agreements for building renovations and shops and voting procedures. A hospital bill from the previous month. Letters of businesses. Councilman business. It was all nothing to her.

' _Did he even realize that I could just, like, take stuff?'_ she thought, even though she didn't feel any compulsion to take his stuff. He was so terrified of this, terrified of the tragedy of Konoha coming elsewhere, that he left her behind and didn't care. Sakura found that she was only standing in this room because she wanted the receptionist boy to come in and see if she was still there, but two long minutes passed and she heard the front door opening and closing once.

No other offices or footsteps stirred, but the breeze outside made shadows of tree branches move across the rooms and made the place at least not look fully dead. Sakura looked outside at the street and the blooming trees that Yuraka Town had prettied itself with. _'Maybe Ino or Lee got on a boat, too. Maybe they thought it'd happen again and they tried to get far away, too.'_ Maybe the people that she knew were safe somewhere, or trying to get safe. Maybe. Maybe. It was all a maybe.

"All a maybe," she muttered. It felt like nonsense when said aloud and she frowned. "So. So, maybe I'll—" Maybe what? She still had to find some place that'd pay her for a few hours of work before she could stay in a hotel. Or she could sleep in a tree again. She could also take a 3-week boat ride to the northern continent, but that also left most of the rest of this continent unsearched, and also the northern continent had maybe 500 people on it who lived in snow huts and Konoha saw snow about five days a year. So maybe not.

Sakura gave a last brief search of all the papers again, looking for familiar words, for direction, and she found something. She found the one hospital bill and picked it up. It was a bill for the removal of stitches, one bottle of ointment for a burn, a refill for a steroid cream that would calm reddened skin. These things were written out as _suture removal_ and _honey-base salve, 10 bg_ and _cortizone vial, 5 bg._ She knew words like this back in school and she'd recite them to her friends, or whoever, before they told her to shut up because nobody cared or class was starting. In her ruined bedroom two hundred and thirty-four miles away, lying on the shelf, there was a book that she bought once that had planted this desire in her brain in the first place. And it was still there.

Maybe.

* * *

The night she clutched the hospital bill, she found the local community board in the square and read through handwritten job postings while the breeze of passing townsfolk wafted her back and hair. The hospital needed a new children's doctor, a new traveling nurse for the sister hospital upriver and across the bay, and multiple cleanup assistants. There were open interviews all day, it said. She'd never been to an interview. Her profile of work up until this point, age fifteen, never graduated and almost a grown woman, was asking strangers outside of shops if they needed a hand for the day. She could lift heavy bags and write neatly, and usually they said yes. But. She could do this just fine as well, if all it took was talking about herself to strangers.

When she arrived at the hospital, she was less sweaty, had combed her hair and pressed down the items in her pack to make it look small and efficient as she was. She wore a lovely smile and found a door in the back where men were smoking and occasionally bagging up used syringes. They let her in.

"Tell me about yourself," said a nurse in a nice uniform and a face of bald indifference.

Sakura told her she had left home and her scores in anatomy class at school were very good, and she listed bones and sicknesses and curing plants and the nurse nodded several times. She asked flatly if Sakura had ever been to a medical university, even though her age made the answer obvious and embarrassing. Sakura still forcefully smiled as she answered.

When she got the job, she found that it was the first one where she was made to sign a contract. It demanded that she obey the nurses and not steal equipment, or her paychecks would be halted and Yuraka policemen would seize her and jail her until the stolen goods were found or she worked to replace them. It was drawn on pure white and gorgeous paper and would have looked beautiful in a fine, bound book. She signed. The nurse was named Tamaki and she told Sakura that she would be on morning and afternoon duty starting immediately.

Immediately, she began disposing of used syringes, cloths, washing sheets, and sorting bottles. Idiot's work. She sorted everything quick and clean. She lived in the cheapest inn, walked to work, and she quickly grew tired of returning to a silent hotel room every day. Her one book was not enough. She asked other assistants for their time, with the lovely smile, and a word about wanting to explore the town. Tenten had coffee with her, and talked about knives and the circus. Darui went with her to the comedy show and laughed at bad accents. Temari rebuffed her for being fussy and personal, but went on the seal-viewing ferry with her on the lagoon.

"Thanks, I had a great time! See you tomorrow!" she said to them every time, because it was as close as she could get without choking or sobbing to admitting the truth, to admitting that she was desperate for friends and laughter and good things to look forward to and great god, she was lonely. She went to sleep hugging herself again like her first few nights in the woods after Konoha's ruin. She did not tell people where she had truly come from.

When she'd worked for a week and had bothered Temari twice, Sakura bought books. A book about history of medicines, a novel about witches and cat familiars ( _The Nigh Mornings_ ), and a book about deer, because the cover was unmistakably a photo of the Nara farm in Konoha. The book was printed nine years ago, in a city across the continent. When she was eight years old, someone came to her town and took that photo. She read to relax, and rinse Hidan and Skullface and homelessness and her dead father out of her mind and sleep.

Then she was "promoted" to the duty of pushing gurneys and moving crates, because the head nurse, visiting from the faraway sister hospital, noticed she could lift and move heavy supply boxes quickly. Sakura's job became more sweaty. The head nurse asked her if she'd run away from home to join a circus, because of her strange hair. Then the head nurse started making her stay late. Tenten was at her side and they attempted to laugh and roll their eyes together.

When the Bastion foreigner quit, a boy named Omoi was hired to replace him. She scoffed at his plebian taste in candy and sweets. They heaved a ten-brick-tall fireplace piece from the basement to the second floor together and smashed each other's fingers in the stairwell. Later he said, "So, do you like mystery plays? The Saturday one's good. I could take you." He took her. When he tried to kiss her, she let him. She kissed back and they both gasped, defenseless to the burrowing warm sensation in themselves and pleasantly surprised. Later he refused her offer to go see the seals in the lagoon, and Darui refused to speak to her, and one Sunday, neither of them came to work, and were never seen again. Sakura cried.

When a dark time came around ten in the morning one day, and the cleanup assistants' work in the basement slowed to a safe, quiet crawl, Sakura was using an eyedropper to add peony solution to a cough medicine, and the head nurse liked the sharp exactness of her drops, and said that maybe next month she could help the rotational nurses on the first floor. The next month, she was. She removed old supplies, gave out new ones, and eventually administered shots. She got a small bonus upon promotion, but no raise. Tenten and Anko went shopping with her. Temari didn't talk to her anymore. Her hair was getting longer, and she took care of it, thinking of Ino, and she ate half of a pie on her mother's birthday and pretended to talk to her.

When time passed, she let it. She began to live here.

Sakura lived in Yuraka Town, a school dropout, with a stable job and living alone and unnoticed. She was a nurse's assistant who measured and administered medication and tended to patients as ordered. In her free time she went on walks, took friends to plays and dinners and boat rides in the lagoon and read books if she wanted to rest. Tenten went on the lagoon with her the most. Temari was a friend when it suited her to be one, her boss Shizune was a teacher when Sakura prompted her with questions, and once she went out with a young man whose overbearing behavior did not exactly endear her as much as Omoi's earnestness had the night they kissed, a Saturday in August. She still thought about him.

Sometimes she thought he and Darui were criminals who had been close to capture before they fled Yuraka. She sometimes thought about one of them coming back for her. Or both. She thought about Omoi finding the address of her inn somehow, being in her rooms, saying that he wanted her. She thought about kissing him many times, because he was good at it for a boy who'd never kissed a girl. Maybe this time she could ask him to go somewhere instead of the other way round. She could invite him into her room since the inn was fine with guests. So easy to imagine him acquiescing to her if she kissed his mouth teasingly and grinned at him. He blushed like those poor boys who never could speak to girls.

He would come in and he'd remove her clothes immediately. That seemed more in order than her removing his first. Didn't it? He couldn't laugh or make faces at her because she was trim and had a good face and her breasts were good enough sized, probably. Enough for him? It had to be. Why, just about everyone at home thought she was pretty. Oh, hopefully it'd be dark and their bodies would be smothered with candlelight and shadows, like in every good play, every good book. She would push him onto the bed very gently. Or he could push her? Being pushed didn't sound sexy. Maybe it did. Dammit. Surely it'd mean he was hard and ready and wanted her badly.

So maybe she'd push him a bit and tease him about that, and then he would push her down at last. Her fine dress is on the floor and he sees her only in the lace undergarments that she couldn't afford yet. He slid his rough hands up her waist and shoulders and under the straps of the bra and peeled them away and she shivered when her soft breasts were revealed to him. If he made a mean face at her she'd crush his wrists or scream at him. If he dared. At this point she'd be sitting on him, it seemed. Right? Would that be comfortable? Would his belt be pushing into her underwear? A metal belt buckle pushing an irritating red indent into her vulva, wonderful. Anyway, back to business. _'Our business is the ritual inside, girly.'_

The man in the vest appeared and the fantasy evaporated. She saw him on her bed. He held those books in his arms and looked so terrified like an unshaven, unmade young man, but he would hurt her. Sakura pressed her clutched fists tight against her naked breasts and in three seconds the mental picture of that man was gone. She yanked her nightwear back on and did not sleep for two more hours.

She thought about the women in the window who had watched her escape and if they hated her for not helping them. They should. _She_ would, if she were behind that window. Folk from Konoha must have hated her before they died. Some people must have seen her running, and this burned away the last tiny trace of pleasure that still set in her belly. Shame was spilled there instead. God, she was so ashamed and did not want to say it. Some people watched her run out of town and knew she was a cowardly little cunt with soiled pants. She was alone now. Hiding alone in a hotel room, for money, for friends. Something easy. She found that underneath the shame she wished she could talk to Rock Lee. Or Ino. _'_

 _I love you. Love you both. Wherever you are. Are you hiding, too? Is that why I haven't seen you yet?'_

Is _that_ why she hadn't seen them yet, across all this time, after asking so many people? Because they were hiding. They weren't...they were just...hiding.

They were. Hiding.

...Yes.

Sakura believed this. They were scared like her, of course they were. Men, women and children had all fled like cowards. She had even fought one of the It Men with her hands, while crying out in terror like a frightened animal. She crushed its soft slug head. That was a real thing. And now she sort of wanted to throw up. She got out of bed and read a book about medicinal plants while standing up.

The next morning, she approached the head nurse, Shizune, who was busy as usual. She gave one-month notice for her plan to quit and Shizune balked. Winter was a busy season for wounded workers and frostbite, and a slow season for hiring new workers. Sakura cited family reasons for needing to leave, and Shizune asked for details. Asked if Sakura did not care for Yuraka Town's location and would consider a different job on a nearby coast. It was upriver from Yuraka and north across a bay. The sister hospital needed a new nurse assistant. Sakura said she would consider it because, privately, she wanted to move forward and search new towns for familiar faces, and she was telling herself that folk from Konoha, almost two hundred miles inland, might be drawn to oceanside towns rather than towns surrounded by woods. Easier to travel. To escape. Most creatures that came out in a dark time were too dumb to swim well, so if they walked into the ocean, they usually didn't walk out.

So she said maybe.

The next day, her birthday passed. Tenten appeared after her shift with a card that could be traded for slices of cake, and a fine black skirt that almost touched her knees. Sakura wanted to keep it.

"I'm so sorry to see you go, Sakura. I wish I knew sooner! It's not even fair. Now I'll have to do my shifts with Tamaki all by myself. Bleghh! Maybe you're lucky to head out. I'll be here forever, probably. My family is just a day's ride away. I know that job at the smith's is gonna open up soon! So if you ever come back, can you come see me? Maybe you can write me? I'll make a hammer for you, a red one! Maybe pink? Oh, a red one first. Definitely."

Sakura realized not for the last time that she had friends again. She had a home, even if it was an inn. She had a closet for her clothes and books and her trinkets and her own bed. She had wintered here, loved it here. She could walk all of Fountain Square with her eyes closed. She hadn't thought of Hidan in weeks. She was okay.

The year had been good to her. The year of Yuraka. She missed it already. She wanted to keep it.

She left.

* * *

So the days passed where Sakura was a cleanup assistant, and then a nurse's assistant—now she moved on. The year had turned and it was April now. And she was farther from home than almost any of her townsfolk had ever been.

She was at sea for the first time. The _Racketeer_ was a cargo ship, not a passenger one, but Shizune had secured them room and board somehow. They were due to hit port that day and her volunteer cleaning shift was close at hand. But her shift as a nurse had one patient remaining. She stepped out of Shizune's examination room and went to Inari, sitting in the bolted-down waiting bench by himself. She touched his shoulder and kneaded once at the hard, anxious knots there. "Hey, it's time. And it's going to be quick and easy, all right? I'm going to take care of everything myself and then you'll be on your way."

"Fine," he said with a twitch of his tight lips. She kept her hand on him as she guided him from the empty waiting area to a crowded sort of doctor's office. The room had cabinets with latched doors and its own sink and a table where shipmen with injuries or needing surgery would both be tended to. Shizune watched Sakura. Inari sat himself on this table and kept his back as straight. The water was calm outside and they felt no sway of the boat. Only Sakura moved. She held out her own hands in front of Inari.

"I'll need to clean it out again before I can give you a good judgment," she said. "Will you let me?"

The boy's eyes were wide and speared some point around Sakura's collar. "I gotta be able to clean the decks tomorrow. Gotta." he said.

"You will if Shizune says you can," she replied gently. "She'll tell Zabuza herself if you're not able to do it. Right, ma'am?"

"Of course I will. Zabuza won't relent on my judgment, Inari. He never has," came Shizune's predictable reply. This reply had been given to Sakura already, that her own examination might run more smoothly.

Inari did as he was bid and held out his bandaged right arm, covered from the top of the wrist up to the inner elbow. He held it over the small table that was layered with paper to catch drips of blood and fluid. Sakura took a set of scissors and gently snipped at the bindings till they were loose and short enough that she could pull them off gently with her own fingers. The wound beneath was as dark as it had been yesterday. Scar tissue was growing over it, but beneath that film many parts of the branching gash were still green. The flush she had cleaned Inari's wound with ought to have killed this infection by now, or at had left only scattered, dying bits left. Penetrating objects that left infected areas in the body were not meant to look so green; Shizune's lessons on wounds like this had not addressed gashes that fought her own standard drug. There was no fact to draw from.

"We'll need to slit it open a bit like last time," Sakura said a little too quickly, and Shizune noticed and made her gaze on the girl penetrating.

"Y-yeah. Yeah." said Inari.

"We'll scoop those nasty bits out, and flush the area a bit more. And we'll give you more time to heal and get your strength back into that arm," Sakura said with a smile for him. Inari's eyes flickered to hers once, but he didn't want to answer her. He waited for the cutting. Sakura flipped open the latch-box that held the smaller tools and found the fourth-size scalpel. She kept talking to him. "Tell me about that fishing party last night. I heard the kids were outside all trying to catch a shark with Haku's old lure?"

She pressed the scalpel gently in and the surface of the scar tissue split. Inari' s lips contorted to try to muffle a noise of pain that he'd known would come and could not be muted. The doctor ignored his cries and eyed Sakura's hands, sliding too slowly down the gash. Inari, twelve years old and never crippled before, could not recognize the poor handiwork. Sakura kept talking after the wound was open and its green ooze began to dribble down the rounded sides of the boy's arm. Drops of it hit the paper below. Sakura reached in with a tiny wet cloth to wipe out more of it. She could not see Shizune pursing her lips.

The exam room door opened and Sakura's hand remained stone-still inside Inari's arm as she and the others looked up. Haku was there, panting and hair coming loose from its bun. His fingers clenched slightly on the door. "Sakura. If you would. Please come on deck."

Sakura said as rehearsed, "I'm in the middle of a patient visit, Haku, I can come up in—"

In a laughing woman's voice, Shizune interrupted, "Why, what's happening on deck, Haku? Are we hitting land soon?"

"We need help securing something and Zabuza needs more strong hands, ma'am. He'll be pretty cross if I don't find some."

"Oh, no worries. Sakura, you go ahead. I'll finish here. You can head on to your cabin once you're done up there."

Sakura turned a baffled expression to Shizune, while her hand remained steady and her fingertips frozen just inside the gap in Inari's skin. Shizune pushed off the wall slightly and approached; the stern demeanor melted from her and she made to take over the girl's position. The transfer of the scalpel between hands was smooth such that Inari did not even feel the change, at least not until the head doctor's fingers pushed lower on the scalpel to achieve a more precise grip, and then she began nudging the exposed pus towards the surface. It came away from the innards of the boy's arm easily. Sakura wanted to marvel at it, but Haku was looking. She strode towards him and he held the door open till she was through the threshold.

"So what do you need help with?" she called over her shoulder.

"It's something they netted on the port side. Let's hurry, please."

She opened the waiting room door for them both and started jogging. There was space enough for them to move side-by-side; Haku was pressing her to move faster by jogging just slightly ahead of her. Sakura tried to keep up, but she was more and more impatient with each stride.

"What is it? Why are we hurrying?"

"I didn't see. I'm sorry. It's something he wants to haul up, I think."

The medical room, captain's office and mess hall were all well behind them and the stairs to the deck were in sight. Haku looked away from her. "I'm going to get Mr. Hanzo next. I'll meet you on deck." Here, he pivoted so hard on his heel that it squeaked against the floorboards and he was near-instantly out of Sakura's sight and into an adjacent hallway that led belowdeck. Sakura made for another staircase to the right. She jumped from the floorboards to the second step easily and hurried up the darkened stairs without need of the handrail.

The door at the top was heavy steel, made for keeping people in and unwanted deck visitors out in case of grave emergencies. The standing cabin boy let her open it herself as per usual and she left the lit hallways behind in favor of sunlight and ten bolted-down lanterns, now unlit. It was only nine in the morning, sunrise three hours gone. Her hair had been tied back many hours ago to keep out of the way of any patient procedures, but the strong sea winds thrashed at it still. With one hand pushing some hair behind her ear, she spotted the five watchmen all clustered along the port side of the deck, all staring down at the water. Zabuza's haul was surely netted there. She started forward.

"Haku brought me, sir," she called over to them. The third watchmen, Suigetsu, she had yet to learn, spared her a look but returned his gaze to the sea seconds after.

Zabuza was on the far side of the group, wearing his shirt with the torn-off sleeves that made him look like a rogue. Without looking, Suigetsu shoved a length of thick white rope behind him, sort of in her direction, so she took it from him. She furrowed her brow at his indifferent bak and then looked over the side of the boat.

Half-caught in one of the fishing nets was a fat grey creature smeared in black oil, sweating it into the sea. It had the appearance of a seal or a manatee but for a thin neck separating a bulging head from bulging body. Every passing wave would bump its belly and elongated right flipper against the ship's hull while the head roved and dipped under the surface. The crowd was all watching for movement from the creature itself, but none came. It was dazed or dead.

"Can I drop a shoe on it?" asked the short watchman.

"No, idiot."

Sakura, too, was dazed and fought for the presence of mind to wonder if she was also unconscious. The same thought was on each mind there on the deck, but none dared to say it lest it grow from joke to truth. They were quiet and waited for commands and Sakura's breath came in and out with difficulty, with unwanted weight.

"Looks disgusting, whatever it is," the captain finally added.

It looked familiar; it looked too unnatural. It looked like a creature that came out in a dark time. It was a sad and crippled sea creature, they prayed, or it was what it looked like, floating dead against a ship in the daylight.

Why in the sea? Why dead, what had killed it? And why was it still here in plain daylight, not disappeared once the dark time ended? Sakura hated these questions and pushed them away, spurned them like infection. She shouldn't have to see it. Haku shouldn't have called her up here. But if she hadn't been told, it could only have been an unpleasant surprise later.

"You want to haul that up on the deck, sir?" Suigetsu asked, still looking over the side.

"I wanted it up on deck when I thought it was a sea lion." Zabuza said. His face was wrapped up smartly in bandages up to the nose again; it was Shizune's work or Haku's. "Now I think not. No. We'll each take the rope and haul it back towards the stern. Shove it into our wake and let the waves push it far behind us."

"Yes, good idea. Great idea, sir."

"I'll help," Sakura said, grasping her own length of rope again, but the short watchmen was yelling "Let's heave!" at the same time and no one heard her.

Zabuza uncrossed his arms and showed the two ends of rope that he'd held in his right fist. He wrapped them about his arm and walked along the edge of the ship, moving through the watchmen group and past Sakura. "It's caught on some piece of wood down there, so it needs a hard pull. Everyone heave—now."

Sakura heaved and almost kicked the captain's calves in her haste. She straightened herself and pulled her arms up slightly, feeling the weight in the rope. It was a great weight indeed, but these six men and herself, working with the buoyancy of the water, could pull it. She heard the soft straining of the other men behind her. To their left, a few more crewmen were watching their strange maneuvers. But they didn't matter right now. Sakura took another look over the side of the ship at the creature. She watched for movement of its body or its eyes, for twitching flesh. But there was nothing. But she could not stop looking at it while she heaved.

In another minute, they'd passed the stairway that led up to the captain's office and the steering wheel and were nearing the stern. In that travel time, Sakura studied the creature and hated it. Its flipper kept scraping the hull of the ship, its head swung out towards the open ocean and then knocking against the boat again like a carnival toy. And it dared to exist out here in the lovely morning, in her lovely daylight. Damn the thing, kill it, get rid of it. May an orca gnash its teeth on this thing and puncture it and rip it to ribbons. If she were an orca herself, she'd dash it against rocks till its life and organs had been scraped off and out of it.

When Zabuza could walk no further along his ship and bumped the stern's railing, he sent the signal to all the men and to her to give one last shove and to drop their rope ends, too. Sakura's turn came and she strained her arms and pushed, threw her rope mightily through the air. The short watchmen whooped at the sight of the ropes sailing down to the waves.

Then the beast touched the whitewash of the ship's wake and was smothered by it. The fat body finally turned and seemed to flail in the water as the wake pushed violently on it and gobbled it up. The rope ends tangled and waved behind it, still caught. The group watched the creature bob above and below the foam twice before the current of the sea finally turned its head and body the other way. Now it floated away from the ship and looked away from them, too.

"That's one of the good nets, too," said the watchman with a beard.

"Captain. Sir. You'll tell someone at Tidusa about it, won't you?" Sakura asked, though she wanted to plead. She straightened her voice, that he might not dismiss her as a whining child. "In case somebody sees another one. Someone in town should know there was precedent."

"For what, manatees in the bay?" chuckled another man. He looked away from the ship's wake. "Hope you're considering finishing school once we hit shore, miss."

"Shut the hell up," Zabuza said, and he did. The captain looked away from the sea, too, and roved his gaze evenly across all hands present. "Roon, up our speed by five knots. And don't say a word about this."

Roon was the tallest man present; he said "Sir!" and skittered back towards the navigation office. The others dispersed as the captain stared forward and began to walk straight through the group. He looked ahead to the bow of the ship and the port that waited for them. Sakura danced a little on her feet. Her body longed to chase after him and beg his attention, beg a reaction from him. Retaliation. Preparation. He was a ship captain and he had to do something. He knew exactly what that creature was. But here she stood dallying and waiting, because to speak of it again brought it back to life.

At the end of six seconds of waiting, she pushed through the rest of the unmoving, disgruntled watchmen and went after him. She bit her lip and cleared her throat twice. A strong sea breeze whipped up the end of Zabuza's coat and tossed little sprays of seawater into her mouth. She called out, "Captain! Wait!" And he didn't wait, so she started jogging.

"Please." she said, gasping, then added, "Sir. I need to talk to you about that creature."

"It'll be taken care of. Go back to the kitchens."

Internally she balked, but her mouth moved on. "I'm from Konoha in the Fire province and I've seen them in daylight before."

They kept walking. Zabuza's head steered slow as a whale shark till his eyes caught hers. She didn't dare bow her head from his stare. "Say that again," he said in a growl.

"Do you know about Konoha?" she asked instead.

"I know it was a town and now it's not."

That stung. So dismissive she felt ashamed of it. "Where'd you hear about it? Have you ever heard of any refugees from there? I'm looking for them."

"Some sailor south of here," he replied. "Didn't know him. Didn't talk about refugees." He kept eyeing her and walking as two passengers walked by. Then, "If you know anything about that thing in the water worth sharing, then enlighten me." The glare turned spiteful. With his disdainful frown through his bandages and the angered brow came the realization that he did not believe her at all.

Sakura told him what she knew; after a minute of talking, Zabuza grasped her shoulder and pushed her towards a group of bolted-down crates where he bid her to whisper. So she did. She told the story as she'd told it to Councilman Yarga one year ago. Her tongue was steadier and she did not cry this time. She put forth as many details of the creatures as she could, details of the gunmen she saw, numbers and weapons and locations, the statistics that would have traveled and passed from the mouths of whoever had talked about it. She described beating one with her bare hands.

"God, I hate kids."

"—What?"

"You beat it up by yourself? Did you use your magic powers to do it? Your cute little fists? If you're telling me a fever-dream story I'll pull your ugly hair out of your head. Lying bitch."

"I'm not lying and if you really thought I was, you wouldn't be standing here. We wouldn't be talking. Right?" This was all it took to make him stop fighting her. She kept going.

She described the run out of town, hiding in the tree, leaving Ino behind and walking barefoot to Iwa. She described how she almost bit through the skin of her hands and stole clothes from an abandoned house. Zabuza kept up his hard glaring at her for most of the ten minutes it took to tell the story. It was a few minutes shorter than the entire encounter had taken in real time.

By the end of it, his disbelief was still written across his face and she could read his frown hidden by the bandages still in his hard, pinched brow. Sakura realized not for the first time that he was handsome. Zabuza caught her youthful stare and did not acknowledge it.

He took a step towards her. She tightened her every muscle to stand unmoving before him. "If I believe you, then I have to consent to either that your village was damned, and the men in power there were doing something damned and conniving, or you were victims of a bad coincidence."

Her jaw dropped open and she glared. "It wasn't a _bad coincidence—"_

"Then what?" His silhouette was huge and his shadow covered her. "Your people were unlucky bastards or stupid bastards who brought it on themselves. And if this is the second time you've seen one of them in regular daylight, then maybe whatever terrible thing brought it on them is following _you._ "

"It's not!" she barked back desperately. "I haven't done anything wrong and neither did Konoha. Neither did you, right? You look me in the eye and tell me the thing caught on your ship was a sea lion!"

"..."

"Hello!? I'm waiting!"

This last caught the attention of two female passengers walking by. Sakura put her hands on her waist and leaned forward to shove her face up towards Zabuza's. She did it naturally, but it also served to make her look more haughty. An entitled, angry passenger whose breakfast eggs came served scrambled instead of boiled this morning.

The passengers walked away, the older one looking back at her. Zabuza had not changed or masked anything about his own posture in the meantime. He looked like he hated her. He looked like the now-dead gunman who once had slapped her.

"I could tell people that you brought it," he hissed. "Since with your previous experience, there's precedence. That they show up where you are."

She wanted to cry again. She wanted to beg. "That's not fair."

He nodded just once. "Maybe. And maybe not. But I can tell them anything I want. You—"

"You don't know that they haven't shown up in daylight elsewhere, and just nobody said anything!" she cried. Her hands did not hang haughtily on her hips now. "Or, o-or news never got out. Or people didn't get out. Nobody past Emmha had even heard what happened to Konoha or Kumo. I didn't tell anybody in Yuraka but that councilman, because I thought they'd, they'd throw me out, or hate me. Like that, that butcher woman. I thought they might ban me from town. Or make me be quiet."

He laughed at her. Sakura grimaced and almost started to sweat. But she kept thinking while she sweated. "If you don't tell anybody, I will. Someone has to know. And if they don't like what I say, I'll just leave. There's plenty of towns on that coast. I can cover lots of ground even without Tidusa, I'll keep looking."A section of Zabuza's bandaged face went up and down in a thoughtful expression Sakura could not see.

"I don't think you're gonna find anybody," he said.

"I don't care what you think," she shot back. "I've found signs of them before, people have seen them. I know they're somewhere. I want this. Even more than staying in Yuraka with a job. I want home."

"Want 'home'?" he echoed, tilting his head back. Sakura thought helplessly that he was handsome, that he was still mocking her, that she didn't know why she'd framed her desire so childishly. She just nodded at him, and in her desperate, young simplicity, he understood.

Zabuza asked, "How many people have you told about what happened? And how'd they react?"

"I told dozens of people. Not far from Konoha, mostly. After Emmha, I stopped." She didn't explain, and again, he understood, but he did not laugh. "Like I said, the councilman was the last one. Most people would be surprised, or scared. They'd ask if the things were coming this way. They'd take me seriously. You don't joke about those things."

"Yeah," he said quietly.

"And a couple people, they'd tell me to go away. They acted like because I talked to them, they'd be next. They just, they yelled at me—"

"Just means they took you seriously, too."

"Everyone does," she replied as though it were obvious. But she realized it slowly herself. Everyone she met across leagues and hills took her for a serious young woman, a source of truth and horror, a woman grown with a real job, a friend and helper, a potential _wife—_ she avoided Zabuza's eyes. Hidan had been the only person in her life this past year who called her a _girl_ and not a woman. But she was a young woman. She'd been one and been acting as one all this year and more. Sixteen felt like a small number in her estimation, but in truth nobody around her cared. No one asked. No one asked what it had done to her, even though she knew.

She had touched this thought several times before, usually on accident. When she was buried under warm bedsheets or having coffee alone, it'd risen up by itself and she'd crushed it. Stomped its life and organs out of it. This ungodly, _untrue_ concept that what had happened to her, and what she was doing, was _w—ro—ong_ and, and. Was. _Poi—n—t—les—_

But no. No, that was a fake thought, for imbeciles or failures, or people who'd failed classes and had never dated or just were _jackasses_ like Ami and Neji or the gunmen and absolutely not such people as her. No, she'd always prided herself on positivity and perfectionism, and screw what everyone else thinks!

She was absolutely not a failure and her heart was strong and beautiful just like Ino and Hinata and Rock Lee and Ms. Inuzuka the vet and her parents. She was absolutely—? Absolutely.

At the beginning of this unbearable snake of thoughts eating her had the fact that people took her seriously. That was because—

"I'm of marriageable age, after all." she added dumbly. She did not know that a quiet three seconds had passed.

Zabuza did and did not care. He chuffed an unimpressed sound through his mask of bandages. "You sound like you're ten years old. Nobody _of marriageable age_ says that." But she did not look chastised, or react to him. She reacted to something inside herself that made her deaf to him. It made their silence heavier. Uncomfortable.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked her.

"Okay," she replied, having not heard him. She cleared her throat. "Yes. I'm sorry. Anyway, are you...are you going to tell someone in Tidusa with me or not? I'd like an answer."

"Yeah, I'll do it," he told her. "The militia gunmen are the ones you want to talk to. Not just the police who beat up purse-snatchers. We'll go there."

"Yes. Agreed." She swallowed and looked him in the eye.

The captain's eyes roved upward, tracking the position of the sun. Their conversation had taken a longer time that it had felt like, and another handful of workers had passed them by in their half-secret corner and wondered at them. Sakura was oblivious to them, and Zabuza indifferent. And with the two in agreement, it no longer felt like he hated her.

Sakura looked up at him. "Thanks for listening."

"Sure," he said flatly, and then, "Stay by the gangplank after we dock. I'll find you."

"I'll be waiting," she replied, almost smiling.

"Room at the Minazuki if you do stay in town. Rooms are small but they're not bad. They got good beer. It's next to a hat shop."

"Oh! I'll look for it. I hope it's near the hospital, though."

"Huh?"

"I took a nursing position at the hospital. Um. You told me before to go back to the kitchens? I've been doing shifts with Doctor Shizune in the medical hold for the whole voyage."

"Hm. Then you can probably afford a bigger room at the Minazuki, then." Sakura waited for further comment, but none came. "See you later." He turned and walked off, sharply removing himself from her.

"Bye," she called after him.

Zabuza lifted a hand as he got further off. Sakura accepted it even though he chose not to look back at her. She lowered her hand and walked out of their cubbyhole space. It was only a few hesitant steps at first, to leave there and finally stop looking like she was hiding something Then she was walking like she walked to work in Yuraka. Purposefully, easily.

He'd taken her seriously, like everyone did, and offered to help her and vouch for herin the end. Surely that was more important than the caustic attitude that he'd kept up the whole time. He cared so little for her flattering gaze upon him, and he mocked her. He mocked the story of her killing one of the It Men by herself like it was a tale she made up for pity. He said he might tell the town gunmen that she brought the creature herself. She'd serviced his sailors with work injury treatments and medicines and health advice for three days and he thought she worked in a kitchen.

"Mean little bastard," she said to herself. Finally. "He's a total bastard. Ugh! _Ugh!_ I wish I could yank his bandages off. Jerk, you think you're a pirate? You ferry glass and lumber in a cargo boat, get over yourself." A few more comments like this successfully expelled the weight of his accusations from her. She painted him as something that would make her sigh and laugh. He reminded her of Toro, one of the cat familiars from _The Nigh Mornings._ One of the grumpy black cats.

She took a deep breath of salty ocean breeze and exhaled it. She walked up a dozen steps towards the stern of the boat that sat higher than the midsection. The point was that he was helping her. He was not all bad. She was not all bad, either.

"Are you in Tidusa?" Sakura said to no one over the ocean.

No one was around, no one said anything back.

"I'm coming, don't worry," she said to no one but herself.

She was due for a shift cleaning the hallways belowdeck and turned around. She had to be in front of the galley to start. She had to start her new job in Tidusa at the nice, big hospital they had there. Hopefully she could afford to sample local coffee and croissants. But that was one fun task, and many more waited for her.

She had to search the town in her off hours to see if anyone knew of strangers passing through, which would be hard to do in a port town full of strangers. She had to look in smaller coastal towns, too. She had to talk to strangers at inns and bathhouses and grocers and isolated farms. She had to. She had to find people. She had to.

* * *

Journey begins.

The monster is not following her yet (the creatures that appear in daylight are not following her, either) but the monster remembers her. And they'll meet again next chapter. I had some minor angst about a long chapter with zero MadaSaku content, but that is not the point of this chapter. See paragraph below marked with * for The Point and What I'm Doing With Sakura in This Story.

This will be a monster-human romance with my ol' fanfic favorite tropes of obsession, suspense, possessiveness and cool animals/creatures. Those are (some of) my things, I swear. I want to write 15 - 20k chapters because I effin like them, but updates will be slow as mine always are. I am currently deployed and working 6 days a week at my base. That still gives me more free time than when I was stateside and trying to write this + other WIPS. Any update for this will seem fast to me, though. I STARTED this story in May 2015.

*The Point I am trying to get across with my literary writingwurds in this chapter: Sakura is traveling to a multitude of places, absorbing a little something from each one as she goes through them in a blur, but processing almost nothing. Many people treat her with disinterest or dismissal. She is a young woman who feels like an unprepared, abandoned child and cannot express that to anyone. She is an extrovert carrying heavy internal feeling that she cannot express and deals with the problem by thinking very surface-level about her life and problems. Felt like explaining this when I realized I've seen too many writers trying to paint Sakura as "introverted" lmao get some glasses.*

See you, and the Uchihas, next time.


	2. Chapter 2

Here's the next several steps in Sakura's journey. It took ages because I wrote 12,000 words' worth of scenes that I ultimately axed because they didn't fit for one reason or another. The 17,000-ish words I kept is about misery and monsters and riding a deer. I promise Chapter 3 will be overall a little happier.

Chapter 2

* * *

She was embarrassed when Zabuza found her again. Sakura had been at the appointed spot on the dock earlier than necessary. She left her bags in Shizune's care and so stood unburdened and idle men worked and grunted and unloaded long flats of timber in front of her. Her head was oscillating around to slowly take in the city view that extended far to her left and far to her right. Tidusa was bigger than Yuraka, bigger than any town she had been to. It was made of wooden buildings and white brick buildings and high hills in the pleasant, green-pasture background and a beach and beautiful, accented shopping boulevards with cobblestones and little boats with names painted in cursive, and even more that she wanted to see up close. That was how he found her, standing by uselessly and staring.

The shock of his appearance and his glare marring the town view almost made her flinch. Zabuza's rumbled clothing and sharpness looked wholly unwelcome in front of this place. "Let's go," he said. Sakura followed down the gangplank.

She followed along the length of a dock wide enough for two carriages. They walked past a passenger ship that seemed to carry only men and women dressed for a dressage competition. "So where's the police station?" she asked, when they walked through a quiet stretch of dock.

"Five minutes," he said.

"A five minute walk?" she asked, but he only grunted, and then Sakura stopped trying.

The dock became a short bridge crossing over a low stretch of beach, and the bridge led them onto cobblestones. In another minute they would be surrounded on two sides by brick buildings, businesses and residences. Tidusa had more people than she was used to, and wider streets, and a lot of opportunity for her to crane her neck looking at one thing and another. In another minute they'd be at an intersection where many carriages and passersby were making their way. In another minute they were past and Sakura smelled sawdust and fruit and fish and soap. After another minute she longed to go down the street they'd passed where the market was bustling and inviting. She asked Zabuza if he stopped there, perhaps he didn't hear her. In another minute the market was past and the buildings began to spread out. In between some of them flashed a view of the bright sea. Zabuza corralled her into a door and removed her from sight of the sea and everything else.

Perhaps it had been a fire department once. There was a front desk, a supply rack with shields and bags and a high balcony along the back wall where men with guns lounged and claimed space like cats. One of them came down a ladder when Zabuza shouted his name. He motioned for them to sit on some stools he dragged for another room. Sakura told the man that she was from a town southeast of here called Konoha, but at that point she made the strange decision to close her mouth. The man's eyes twitched up and down and he frowned. Sakura was off Zabuza's ship now, safely inside a building, clothed and clean and hundreds of miles from home and she thought all of a sudden she would kill this man to be able to go back there.

She could strangle him or beat his face in, like she beat a monster's face in with a steel bat, and its meat and fluids splattered on her, sluiced down her arms, squelched. _Srrhhhch._ That slop.

Loose solids sweating out infinite fluid, purple or grey. Into her pores. She had breathed it. She remembered. Exactly. What it felt like.

"Would you tell him, please." Sakura said with no air in her lungs. "Zabuza, um. If. If you would. Please."

"Are you serious?" he said, and before his last word was even finished Sakura was saying "yes". She clung to the sound of his deep voice, mocking her, pretending she was looking at his strong arms or her big bookshelf at home. She relished that creaking in his seat as he leaned forward and the bright white spot in her peripheral vision as he glared at her. Zabuza waited, and Sakura cringed with her whole body till the inner walls of her throat were touching, but she didn't talk. Zabuza whipped his head to the opposite side and exhaled a poisonous sigh, and then came back. He started the story over again.

The man was named Suigetsu and his day was soured by what Zabuza told him. Only two times did his eyes flick over to the young thing that had come in clinging to Zabuza's dirty heels. Her story was like a nightmare he'd had once. She sat in front of him in sandals, pastel colors and a white pendant necklace a woman would wear for a date. She sat still as though to pretend she was not present in the room. Zabuza's story did not contain as much detail as Sakura's had when she told it to him on the boat that morning.

"What? Zabuza, what does that even mean?" Suigetsu said, when one detail seemed more fantastical than the rest.

"I _just_ said, it was against the ship, floating on the surface."

"Daylight."

"Yeah."

"Not a dark time, but the sun's out, and normal daylight."

"Yeah."

"And you could see it just there?"

Suigetsu asked this question multiple times and by the third attempt, Sakura, too, was contributing to help him understand. Suigetsu stared at her with grave confusion when she talked, and when he talked, he spoke to Zabuza exclusively. At the end of it all, Sakura leaned forward to engage the man's attention by force. She told him she would be rooming at the Minazuki and if he wanted to ask further questions, she would be there. He just nodded and asked them to leave and they did.

"Will he let the policemen know, too?" Sakura asked once they left. They took a turn down a different street than where they'd come from. "I know he believed me. But he needs to tell the other men and he really looked like he didn't want to say anything more."

It was quieter out now in this street. Only one other man was out walking. "Yeah, he'll tell 'em."

"He was wearing fisherman's boots. Are the gunmen here trained somewhere, or, you called them militia, so maybe they're just any locals who want to handle guns?"

"You're a fucking leech," he said and turned to look at her again, and Sakura almost cowered again. "Why couldn't you tell him yourself? You told me in massive, needless detail this morning and now you clam up? I'm not your butler, you spoiled little freak. And I'm not telling your dirty shit story again. It's creepy enough walking next to you—"

 _Creepy_ didn't cover it at all. _Creepy_ isn't what happened to her and what she'd told him, and it was creepy how he still acted like this to her face.

Sakura planned to say one sharp thing and then kept going: "You're lucky any girl is willing to walk next to you," she spat. "I'm sorry if I don't like talking about it again and again! I'm sorry! I hate thinking about it! I hate that I'm never gonna get rid of it! I don't fucking care if _creepy_ is seriously all you're getting out of what happened to me. You ferry logs and cheap dishes around for a living. Who the hell cares what you think. I'm going to the Minazuki."

In truth, Sakura made a turn towards one of the commercial streets with no idea as to whether the Minazuki was that way, but Zabuza didn't stop her or say anything. When she walked away, Zabuza slowed in the street and stared after her retreating form. Sakura heard the lack of his footsteps and knew he wasn't following. They were separated in seconds. And in twenty minutes, Sakura found the Minazuki.

The Minazuki was two stories tall, just like the inn she lived at in Yuraka, and the building was blue with white trim, like the Paper House. The lowest floor was a lobby with an attendant at a clean, blue front desk, and a little table of coffee and pastries was available. It looked like a place one would be proud to show off to their friends and acquaintances. Or at least she would be. She went in with a smile, and found her little bags at the front desk with a note from Shizune telling her that she would start work tomorrow. Sakura scoffed. _'I start work now, actually.'_ And after depositing her bags in her new room and cleaning up a bit, she went downstairs to the lobby, and found the man minding the counter.

The clerk was an older man with a fine mustache and she asked him this practiced question, "Excuse me sir, I'm from southeast of here, I was wondering if you heard of any refugees coming to town recently?" Like many, he asked "refugees from what?" and she pulled one of the usual answers and said that her home had unfortunately "burned". The man gave it some serious thought and mustache-pulling. Sakura remembered sitting in a tree, shaking without control of herself and the world around her in ungodly darkness, but for three spots of fire in the Konoha streets. In truth, only small parts of the town had burned.

He said no, in the end. She went next door. Asked this question of the owner of the hat shop, and he quietly told her no, and offered to help her find a spring hat. She declined and crossed the street. Asked the same of the women at a fabric shop. One of them ignored her. The other said, "You're with Minako's little crew, aren't you, some new girl? I know a spy when I see one. You're not getting one ounce of my wool. I'm watching where your hands are, you thief." Sakura couldn't get a real answer out of her and left.

Sakura kept walking around. She got no answers. The walk was nice. Tidusa was nice like a well kept garden with few lingering weeds. She thought about Chouji, who said he wanted to work in landscaping and make gardens and house butterflies like his father did. _"Sakura, after fitness class is over, let's do lunch. It's pasta day in the cafeteria. Yes, again, the cooks are maniacs!"_

She chose to wear a smile as she went back to her building and her room—to _retire_ to her room, she told herself with a real grin, like a cultured and esteemed young woman would. In her room was a nice bed, tall and lovely window and space for her clothes and books and trinkets. She lay on that bed and slept and dreamed about Ino and Chouji when they were all in the middle school play together. Only in the dream they put on _Mateo's Army_ instead of _Chandrelle,_ and there were lots of cats with bowties in the audience. Everywhere they went, in the corner of every scene, a man with Hidan's face followed them.

* * *

She wore plain and earth-colored clothes to work the next day, expecting to wear a stark white nurse's apron over it. The hospital was a fifteen-minute walk from the Minazuki. The hospital was three stories tall, unlike Yuraka's two, and it shone. Beautiful trimmed bushes lined the walkway in front of it. The job offer had made note of the fact that Yuraka and Tidusa had "sister" hospitals, and Yuraka was likely the younger and less talented sister. Inside, Shizune waited for her.

"I'm sorry, I wanted to introduce you to my boss, but she's on the roof right now."

"Oh. Why's she there?"

Shizune was not bothering with a stern front. Distress made her look like a schoolgirl younger than Sakura. She ignored the question and quickly herded her new employee to the clinic on the first floor, where minor ails of all sorts were waiting. It was seven in the morning and Sakura sat on a stool talking important notes while Shizune prescribed a cheap mixture to rub on a lumberjack's sore muscles, pulled a dislocated finger back into place, and explained to a scowling mother how chicken soup could alleviate flu symptoms but not the flu itself.

Over some time and several spring rains, Sakura, too was explaining the basics of the flu, healing bones, rashes and what movement would ruin a recently completed surgery. Shizune took these opportunities to sit on Sakura's stool in the corner and fall halfway asleep. This went on for several weeks.

By June, Sakura had reached out to the other nearly-nurses around her and learned their names and moods and favorite books, makeup and men, and which ones weren't squeamish. One of them was Naomi, and when Sakura shouted across the hall if Naomi was going to try to make her throw up again, Naomi shouted "Yes!"

Shizune's superior was Tsunade Senju, and the name was not a coincidence or a mistake. She lived in Tidusa, and Sakura had seen her in the halls without even noticing her. Tsunami excitedly told Sakura that Shizune was assisting in an operating room, and had asked Tsunami, who was now asking Sakura, to please perform one of Shizune's usual tasks, which was to find Tsunade and fetch her. Bring the god of medicine and knower of all maladies down to the main conference room. She wasn't on the first floor at all, and Sakura had been on the second floor all day. Tsunade, surgeon who broke men's hands, was probably on the roof.

Sakura went. Tsunami had to tell her twice to go to the door that led up to the roof, and then she stood in the middle of the hall with a tray of food for an inpatient, just watching. Sakura's hand was on the doorknob and eyes on Tsunami's awestruck gasp.

"Are you gonna write a report on me or deliver that lunch?" Sakura snapped, and Tsunami stepped back.

"Just. Curious," Tsunami said, moving towards one of the closed doors. "I mean, I've never talked to her either, you've got to tell me what she's like, or what she does up there."

"What do I say?" Sakura hissed. She realized too late her free hand was moving up to clasp over her chest as though it would soothe her heartbeat, which it wasn't doing. "She's, she's from my freaking biology textbook at school! I don't even know why they need her in the conference room. I'm gonna look _stupid!_ "

"Just pretend you're not?"

"Oh my god! Just go." She turned the knob and walked up two short flights of steps separated by a landing. Then she was separated by a door to the roof, and soon there would be nothing separating her from Tsunade. Turning around was physically possible. But not possible any other way. This was her job now. She received biweekly paycheck envelopes for this. Shizune would find out, if she didn't do it. So Sakura did it. While shaking a little. Before she'd even turned the knob, she heard metal banging on metal.

Tidusa's Hospital's roof had a view of the beach. In a great inconvenience, almost all of the town's handful of three-story buildings blocked a chunk of it, but it was there, and the white sand and strong blue coast was wide and present. One's view from the roof was also blocked by several concrete blocks, some grouped, some standalone. Perhaps they held machinery for electric lights and such, she reasoned, and just then she noticed someone between two of them, sitting on a hardwood box.

The person was an adult woman with dark blonde hair and drinking out of a tall bottle, and it had to be Tsunade. Her stars of fame were immediately visible: the surgical whites and a now-empty drinking bottle, and even from this distance a tiny stain of pale violet, that diamond upon her forehead, was visible. Sakura saw tiny dots of green color signifying nail polish on the woman's hands, and her first thought at the whole sight was, _'Of course she could crush men's hands with her grip, with those hands!'_

Tsunade's gaze was pointed downward, looking to her left down at a scene on the street that Sakura could not see from where she stood. Her expression was cool. This expression could have been aimed down at a man with an open abdominal cavity that she planned to stitch back together as though she borrowed the great God's hands.

In a few seconds, Tsunade inclined her head the other way to look at the stranger standing by the door. Sakura froze. She still did not know what to do. She waited and prayed to be thrown out. But Tsunade knower-of-all looked at her for about three seconds and then looked away. And little Sakura exhaled in a jagged manner that suddenly had her painfully aware of her own breathing.

Tsunade Senju ignored her. Sakura could sense a future where she said nothing and walked back into the stairwell to catch her breath and Tsunade would continue sitting. Her hand clasped and went up to her chest again. "Ma'am. Ma'am? You're needed in the conference room."

She looked over at Sakura again and said flatly, "What?" and it was clear she'd not heard Sakura at all. Asking why she was staring instead of clarifying what she had said. Sakura keened into her mouth. Tsunade. Who held and moved cancer. Was irritated. Sakura was an idiot little girl and Tsunade knew it.

Only one second passed. "Ma'am, you're needed in the conference room right away. There's a meeting."

"I am on my fucking _lunch_." Tsunade Senju grumbled and Sakura wanted to jump down the stairs.

"You're still needed," she said, which sounded entitled as hell but the celebrity in front of her didn't show any sign that she minded. She looked away in thought, or perhaps looked at the beach. Two small ships were visible on the horizon and one had sounded its horn.

"Lunch in the conference room, then," she said. She picked up her bottle as he walked past it and dropped it into one of the big pockets on her shirt. Her hands settled there as well as she walked forward. She was not looking at Sakura. She expected the space that the little nurse took up to be gone by the time she got there and it was: Tsunade passed into the doorway uninterrupted and left the door open behind her.

' _She could kill me. She could break me in half with her foot.'_ Sakura thought. _'Oh my god. She was wearing sandals. I want those sandals. She knows I look like some stupid girl who thinks about sandals and nothing else. Right? Was I okay? OH god.'_

Eventually, Sakura had to tell Shizune that she'd gone partway into cardiac arrest when fetching Tsunade. Shizune thought Sakura must know the woman's name from some fantastic story that teachers told the youth to make them want to attend university. Shizune laughed at her and then left Sakura alone in the hallway to complete her cardiac arrest. She had calmed down by the end of the workday. After dinner that day, she went to the Tidusa Library to look at some books that Tsunade had co-authored, and skimmed one she found on a table about the life of a successful chocolate maker.

She went to a butchery and two florists and vegetable and fish and weaving vendors and asked about refugees and one person told her he knew of a sailor who said he'd "escaped" from the northern continent but it meant nothing to her. Work was good, or fine. Tsunade apparently reattached someone's leg after he'd been run over by a milk cart, but Sakura didn't see any of it. Sakura sewed stitches, set casts and read blood tests to doctors who walked away without thanking her for it. Tidusa was good and she felt fine, or did not feel much. The days passed in big, stretchy blurs.

Tidusa was a beautiful town with many things to do but Sakura had done few of them but walk and count the amount of things available. A beach to walk on and wet her feet, park walks and two more shopping streets than Yuraka had, a track where jockeys raced on red deer and held jumping events, boat rides along the coast and three theaters between which at least one play was showing almost every night.

She just walked around, walked till she felt the first touches of exhaustion in her ankles. She missed Yuraka. She missed her father. Her father loved going to town and shopping and pretending he would buy things, and then buying ridiculous things. She stared openly at people with fathers, and families, and laughing, hurrying men who walked with them. Sakura took up less space in the street than all of them.

She approached a vendor with a covered booth that sold birdhouses and birdseed. No one was near, and the man in his little tent faced away from her. When he turned, Sakura saw a a ma who hadn't meant to be seen. He was crying. He could not control his expression and shed tears that dripped to his chin and then fell. The sound of a cart outside had muffled his breathy sob until she was inside here looking at him.

His hands were clenched together. Not holding anything that she could tell besides each other. He squeezed his own hands. Desperate.

"No," he said, but his shaking jaw culled the sound to a whisper.

"I, I'm new in town and I. I." She froze, as she had in front of Tsunade. She thought of her rehearsed questions and lines and none of them came out of her mouth. Her mouth was open. Staring at him.

The man's face pinched together like her dumbstruck face had hurt him. Hurt his feelings. "We're closed. Please. Just—"

"Yes, sir. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry."

" _Thank_ you," he cried after her, then covered his mouth with one arm. He turned away and went to sit at a small table within his booth. The rest of him bowed. He fell inward, like his spine was barely able to hold him upright.

The sound of his sudden gasp and sob reached outside his tent to where Sakura stood now. She didn't know what direction to walk in now.

 _OOHH-hhh!_ was what his last sob sounded like. Something bigger than her or him blasted out of him and ate him from the outside in. It was a fairly deep voice, a grown man with thick hair and hard hands but no grey yet, fighting off his emotions and failing. She didn't know what to say. What to do. He had just begged her to go away and she obeyed.

She had seen and cataloged very few instances of grown men crying. She did not know what it was like to fail and break in front of a stranger. Her arms grew shameful goosebumps to think of it. She had heard her father cry only because he laughed too much. What happened to that man? What happened to Omoi? Had she truly never seen her father cry? Should she have tried to talk to the man? So much of her life now was talking to strangers. Strange men. Strangers. She saw a tiny flash of time in their lives when she talked to them about Konoha, or anything, and every one of them had to cry at some point. Out of her sight. Maybe when she'd had a wonderful day with Ino or her dad and eaten her favorite food, someone else in Tidusa or Kumo or Yuraka had been hurt so badly they wanted to die. She would never know. Or see.

If there was a thread connecting these things, she did not find it and she fell asleep eventually, hearing a stranger sob in her room and her mind till she finally slept. And woke. And slept. And woke. Many times over. Many times over did she sleep and work and search and sleep and work and talk to strangers.

In Tidusa, Sakura heard stories of refugees . She heard of a jeweler's aunt who bribed her way out of jail and was a refugee from the law way down the coast in Calstoa. There was a university assistant who had seen refugees from the northern continent touching down on the northernmost coast, twenty-odd years ago. Dozens upon dozens of others told her nothing, or told her to leave.

She had been to Calstoa down the road and a fish wife straight out of a bad novel or play or both had screamed at her and then at her husband. She had dared to ask a man what it would be like if creatures of the dark time appeared in daylight and had been grabbed by the arm and dragged down the street while strangers looked alarmingly at her and she pulled against him and he pulled harder and so the trip was long and dragging and she called him a freak and demanded he let go and he called her a sinner and a child and then he threw her against a church door and knocked upon it and walked away and she leaned there like a character poised in a play and panted and then the pastor came outside and apologized to her. And after that, Sakura went home.

She had spoken to three women in a park about refugees from the south and they had looked at her once. And then looked away. And when she asked again, louder, they laughed and ignored her still. When she walked away, they cackled and she heard their words hitting her ears and her turned back in between the's and a's and she's: "that tavern outfit" and "circus cunt". Sakura cringed again and again and again that day for her stupid mistake of not turning back and breathing in their faces and asking for a little of their daddy's money and stained thongs for her tavern show. She'd just walked away.

It was a spineless thing to do. They won. She was a circus cunt and her brand-new pink blouse that she liked very much was a tavern outfit and they would say this unchallenged to anyone they wanted, and they would laugh at her. Again. And again. In Calstoa.

At night she rested her hands on her penguin book and on her deer book. The cover of the book was a Nara deer, a photograph from Konoha taken almost ten years ago. She curled her body around the books till their hard corners pinched into her skin and hurt, and she couldn't bear it anymore, and only kept them near as she slept.

This place was not Yuraka, she thought, but underneath this she knew that the difference was not in the size or beauty of the town but in her. It was in her insistence at searching the town for strangers who heard her predicament and could help her and none of them did. None of them helped. Naomi didn't, sweet Shizune didn't, Tsunade Senju certainly didn't. Even she wasn't helping herself, her attempts were futile, this place and these useless people were futile, she was completely futile and this city could consume her and eat her and the last remnant of Konoha would be sucked and swallowed into anonymity and she would die. Sakura curled around her deer book again.

* * *

' _This isn't working and I'm not working,'_ Sakura thought one day. Then she squinted her eyes almost shut and squeezed her shoulders close to herself, but the thought spilled and stained and dried, and grew. A year and a half, nearly, since she'd been home. There was nothing to show for it. Nothing.

Sakura was alone in one of the lower storerooms, sorting X-ray scans and talking to Rock Lee, and in this room she was naked and honest with him.

' _You're like a hero in real life. That's actually, really your personality, and I'm just a rotten, selfish cunt.'_

 _Yes._

' _I, I! I called you ugly! In front of people! And even in front of Ino. I can't believe you laughed at it, too, god, I should have been punched, I wish you'd punched me, Lee, you could have! You're really strong.'_

 _Yes._

' _I thought you were creepy looking when we were younger, but great god, did you blossom. You were so cute, and fun to be around. And I never said it or realized it till I secretly thought I might like you. I'm shallow, okay? I'm just...I'm a fucking shallow idiot. I read books and I'm a know-it-all and I'm thin and pretty, at least pretty enough, and that's the only reason people would like me. I know a lot of it was fake. People hated me._

 _Oh, Sakura._

' _But Lee. You were...better than me. Always. Everything was so good if you were in it. You were my favorite partner to have in gym class. And survival camp. I loved being on your team. We were Fighting Dreamers, remember? I loved that name!'_

 _Me too, me too!_

' _You remember we saw Tree Stars four times?'_

 _It's one of my favorite plays! I would see it four more times!_

' _...I would have gone on a date with you at some point. I mean it. You were fun to be around. And adorable. And. You were fitter than me, than anybody. You worked out like a maniac in your stupid jumpsuit. God, you must be so hung._

 _Is that how that word's used?_ _Sakura, oh my gosh!_

They laughed together.

Lee would have never called her a circus cunt.

The day went on and she told him all about her job as a nurse. She asked him if he was going to university, but Lee said he was nervous about leaving home. Yuraka had the nearest university and that's still days away! He might be studying anatomy or physical therapy, which Sakura was delighted about.

' _Lee. I think I'm going to leave here pretty soon.'_

 _Oh, really? Why? Where are you off to?_

' _I've asked a lot of people about you. And anybody from Konoha. But nobody knows anything. They keep...I keep. I keep failing. I ask people and...everything's wrong.'_

 _Wrong._

' _I, I think something's wrong with me.'_

 _Wrong?_

' _I feel...like, the birdhouse maker. I couldn't talk, and...those girls made fun of me and I didn't say anything. I just let them do it. I don't why they made fun of my clothes. They were my nice clothes. I, I feel...'_

 _What do you feel?_

' _...'_

…

' _I. I feel like Like talking to people used to be easy. People didn't used to argue with me like this. Or be rude to me. I don't know how to, how to act. I think I'm only good at talking to people in Konoha because it's familiar and I know everyone and I actually can't talk to anyone else. I'm scared that I thought I could do this but I really can't and I never could. And I'm the last person to get it. I can't fix it. I can't find anyone. I don't know where to go. I don't know. I don't know.'_

 _Oh Sakura. Sweet Sakura._

' _Lee, I love you. I miss you. Are you okay?'_

 _Sweet Sakura._

' _You called me that once. I really liked it.'_

 _I'm here, Sakura._

' _Where? Where are you? I want to find you so badly. I want to see you. Please.'_

 _I'm here with you._

' _...'_

…

' _Are you. Are...'_

…

' _...'_

...Sakura was curled over a sink, her hands clutching herself, her hair spilling into the sink and absorbing its dirty water. Her fat tears dribbled onto her cheeks and away. She finally exhaled him out of her: she sobbed like a sick man coughing and fell into herself, her spine barely able to hold her upright.

* * *

Sakura fought mightily. She spat and her feet skidded on the tile floor. No one saw.

Once she inhabited herself again, she buried herself in planning and organizing the future and securing her present assets. Sakura fancied herself a very efficient manager and entertained the notion of running her own bakery one day, or rather a weapons store, or a store that was divided in two and did both of those things. She was giddy. She struggled to keep her grin from showing her teeth when she counted her savings two, three and four times in her Minazuki apartment. Her path out of Tidusa was coming clear.

She visited a weapons store, wearing a charcoal black top instead of pink, though the clerk surely still took her to be young, pink and financially dependent on someone. She bought brass knuckles, colored silver and tipped with bits of carved, unforgiving red. Sakura kissed them and hoped it would make her love them and grow familiar with their feel, because they were not her steel bat that she had carried from home. She hadn't touched the bat in weeks even though she thought about slamming walls and faces and Calstoa sluts with it sometimes. Maybe a new, extra weapon would do her some good. The clerk watched her leave and she never spoke to him again.

She rented two learning books on sewing, and took her meager sewing kit and a satchel and one of her pairs of trousers and one of her socks and began to sew pockets into their insides. This took four days. On the fifth day, she gathered her spare money and took it to the bank and exchanged it for mostly large coins, and sealed these into her many new, hidden pockets.

She began to extract herself and her possessions from the Minazuki. A concoction of supplies and self were sorted neatly together into the bag. Supplies were selected first: two pairs of undergarments, a third for sleeping, two clothing sets and soap, eggs, turnips, butter, tent cloth, medicine and a compass. Then her trinkets and colors and pieces of herself came off the walls: her marble comb, her nursing certification, the last-minute brass knuckles—her steel bat that was from Konoha, spiked on the end, a murder weapon, she kissed it—and her three favorite books. The first of these books was _Paths Tread by the Grand Red Deer._ Sakura left her apartment for good on a Wednesday and went to buy a deer.

The eastern quarter of Tidusa was mostly flat grassland, home to stag farms that bred red deer tall and strong-backed enough to ride in sprints and endurance races. Plenty of those fawns bred in Tidusa and Calstoa were not suited to the hard-driving life of a runner stag. Plenty of farms had deer they would just as soon turn into venison and sell in town, if a buyer didn't come and take them away for the price of an expensive meal. Sakura had money enough for an expensive meal, or a cheap deer to ride.

It was a peaceful walk through Tidusa that day. She passed half a dozen streets of fine white brick and tall windows and tiny plots reserved for trees in the middle of paved walking streets, features she'd enjoyed for three months. She waited her turn to pass a carriage holding two ladies and a young man going about town that afternoon and looked after them as they passed and laughed loud enough for her to hear. She smelled apples and fresh-baked pie from the bakery where she bought her croissants, and a man who waved at her as she passed a residential district. It may have been Suigetsu, but Sakura was too ecstatic to even look in his direction. At the end of the walk she was off of paved streets and in a wide grass field with Tidusa's gleaming brick all behind her, the green expanse dotted with spears of black antlers.

Sakura held out a stalk of asparagus to a red deer stag whose head reached higher than hers. It was a reddish-brown beast with cloven hooves like the unicorns of her old stories, and thick, dark hair hanging from the mane upon its neck. Most notably, it carried an eight-point head of antlers that could puncture the bodies of any deer it did not like. He had a black, wobbly nose like a doggy and he insisted on sniffing her asparagus politely before chomping off a bite of it.

"I'd like this one, please. What's his price?"

The attendant with her didn't look at her. "Volcano Leap's a son of Blue Sunset Diver. No less than 45 for him."

Sakura thought about politely withdrawing her asparagus stalk. "Not for me, then. As I said, my budget is only 30."

"Yeah."

"Are there any, well, lesser stags? No registered names? They don't need to have long legs or especially heavy antlers, I'm strictly just looking for a traveling steed that can functionally walk and wear a saddle."

"Yeah."

"Excuse me? Hello? AACH!" The asparagus stalk tore impolitely out of Sakura's hand and she jerked backwards into the attendant's side.

Another stag was there meeting Sakura's eyes and daring her to object to his thievery to his face. He chewed the asparagus while scraping one cloven hoof through the dirt, and then did the same with a rear one. He was larger than Volcano Leap, and thicker. He was a ten-pointed stag, his mane newly trimmed and eyes perfect black. Handsome enough, and pushy. When he was done chewing, he assessed that Sakura was out of food and snorted at her.

"Oh! Oh. I haven't fed the ones on his side of the field yet. And he likes asparagus more than Volly. He's 27."

It was nearer to her price range, but ideally her stag would have more than price on his side. "Is he this fussy when he's not hungry?"

"Um, yeah. I mean no he's not. He's not. Sorry."

"Is he or isn't he?"

"He's not! Sorry about that! He's great. Strong old gentleman. You could have him for 25," he said, while part of his face convulsed. Sakura stared at his eyes and his whole face. The man was wearing a smile and meeting her gaze without blinking. With his eyelids pulling back. He held his face tightly in that pose.

She said something that felt nearly cruel. "That's very tight for my budget. Would you accept 22?" she asked.

"Yes, definitely," the man said, and while he spoke his smile broke up and he put it back together crooked. "I'll go get you a bridle. Bridles are um, th-they're, they're free. Saddle packs cost 4 each. Though."

"That's fine, I'll buy two packs as well," she told him evenly, and then he walked away. His gait was strange. Too fast. Arms moving like some automaton at his sides. Something bothered him, and it couldn't be her. Couldn't it? She hadn't been abrasive to him. The stag had only surprised her. And the stag now was only standing placidly, twitching one ear.

Sakura gently set her hand in his hand and gave it a firm tug, and took one step away. "Come," she said. The buck groaned and did not move at all. She put on a fake smile of her own and gave the command louder. Sakura felt the hard stomp of his front hoof into the ground, shoving a vibration up both of her legs.

"Get ready to carry all my shit, you stubborn blockhead," she smiled at him. "Or I'll release you into the woods somewhere and a wolf will get you. Or a hunter. You're a lot tastier than me."

" _Hmm,_ " the buck said, perhaps disagreeing. On the fourth tug, he lumbered in the direction Sakura had pulled him originally. She and he started a slow walk parallel to the pasture fence towards the property's second barn. Once the gate was open, she'd exit this place and Tidusa entirely.

The barn door was cracked open, and remained so for just under five minutes, at which point Sakura's patience was starting to wear. She was a customer here and the man had seemed in a hurry to get her out. If he decided to take a smoke break, she'd stay an extra while telling him her feelings about it. She walked towards that cracked door with a plan to tell the barn attendant that she didn't have time to waste like he did. The man was just inside the door and standing with his fingers almost steepled in front of him, and staring at a spot of wall that contained nothing. But the space on the desk before him did contain a newspaper made mostly out of wrinkled pages.

Sakura took one step forward and was not noticed; the man observed something in his mind's eye that was nothing to do with her. Her second step was also unobserved, and her third step was going to be her angriest and come with a sharp jab about hurrying up with her saddle bags, but she choked on that breath and the man still did not acknowledge her.

 _TAKE HEED_ said the title page, and below it sat a square photograph of a bear with six arms and a nose too long for it, stretched out unnaturally, salivating. It was made of unnatural bulk and extremities small and too long and it was a shape the human mind did not understand. The photograph was taken from a second-story window as the thing walked outside a farmhouse, and Sakura's mind did not know the names of any of those things. She knew the thing walking. The daylight making it visible. _It._

' _How can they publish that,'_ Sakura thought in an awe that crushed her. _'It's in the newspaper. They put it in a newspaper.'_

Konoha did not have a newspaper anymore. Konoha did not have living, unbroken human bodies to read newspapers anymore. Konoha had never printed any of the attacks by the creatures in the newspaper but everyone knew. Except her, until late.

There was text below the photograph, but it was too small to be read from her distance, but she hungered for that information suddenly. What would people say about the It Men if they could talk about them in newspapers? Did a gunmen write the article? Weren't they the only ones who could write about them?

"Excuse me!" shouted the man.

He leaped over the short distance separating them, going past the desk and hiding it from her view and appearing in Sakura's personal space so that her hands that she wrung by her chest almost touched his ribs. "Two saddle bags! Here!"

Sakura froze. One of her hands fell and became limp as she searched her purse for the money she'd promised him. She didn't remember how much money, until the man told her, and he picked up some bags off the floor and pushed them into her arms, and kept pushing. "Thank you! Thank you!" he cried after her, and then he shut the door.

Outside it was silent and Sakura caught her breath. Then she listened for any movement on the other side of that door. No footsteps towards the desk, no tapping on that wooden floor. He wasn't moving.

Sakura's shoulders clenched up like an animal's hackles and she could see, nearly, that man standing three steps away from her on the other side of that door with eyes so wide the lids were pulled back as he waited like predator and prey both for her to move away.

' _Who printed that,'_ Sakura thought, and she gave up, and took a step backwards. _'Whose house...who are you?'_ But she knew. He was scared for his life. That was who and what he was, and nothing else.

Her gaze drifted to the left, to the red deer failure that was hers now. Its eyes were on her. They had been for some while now. It, he, was making a judgment of her. He knew she was terrified. The two of them were under a bright summer sun with stark shadows underneath them and wind and birds all moving as they ought. Sakura was warm all over. It took her some seconds to realize that she was shedding tears, helplessly. The deer flicked his ears when she wiped them away.

The deer's head tracked her as she stepped to his side and fit him with his cheap bridle and the cloth saddle. He did not fuss when she cinched it to an appropriate tightness. He huffed once when she buckled her two new saddle bags onto the back of the saddle, and starting transferring her items from her huge backpack into them. All the while she listened and moved quietly. She was sure the man was still there. Waiting. For her to leave. Even if she shouted and begged, and asked him where that paper was from and where that photograph was from, she knew with certainty that he would not answer. His answer would only be that further hard silence. She wanted to go.

Sakura had seen jockeys mount stags when she passed by one of the two race tracks, and it was harder than it looked. Even as a failure for racing, an endurance failure, a jousting failure, her stag knew well enough the feeling of a human mounting him and was not bothered by it. The man had waited five or six minutes now for her to go.

She did.

* * *

Dozens of quiet, worthless branches were open now with a steed carrying both rider and supplies. Tidusa lay on the west coast of the continent at the top of a miles-wide bay that curved the coast inward as the ocean's soft mouth bit down on the land. Tidusa was on the edge of the upper jaw, Yuraka near the lower jaw. The coast moved northward, and then curved northeast. And there were hundreds more miles directly east, a whole continent to cross, uniform forest broken by the teeth of mountains and quiet plains as the Great God had seen fit. Towns everywhere. Paths and roads with names Sakura did not know bridges with armed men and tolls and capital tradesmen and quiet villages like Konoha that would not exist on maps. Strangers. Everywhere.

The stag walked on through plains and unsupervised cornfields till Tidusa was past and distance removed it entirely from view and from Sakura's mind. A few hours away was Calstoa, and fishing stations along the beach before that, and a clearing with a firepit fit for a party. Landmarks and options and choices existed beyond counting, beyond Sakura's ability to think, and it made her grin, and the grin twisted. Sweat was gathering under her armpits as she held her arms to her sides, reins pressed up into her fingers. There was a smile on her face because she was forcibly holding it up.

Councilman Yarga, resident of Yuraka Town a year ago, had not known where Lee and Miss Kurenai had gone after they took shelter at his house. The attendant at Liotti Red Deer Farms had not let her see what town one of the creatures had been seen and photographed in. She hadn't seen her friends for over a year. Heard anything worthwhile. Anything. In a year. Sakura knew.

Sakura arrived in Calstoa with her nameless stag trotting. She sat the trot until it started to sting her back, but the posture and the important looks she got from walking passersby was too thrilling to make her want to quit. She had a very important mission to conduct. Her project for today was to visit Calstoa Town Hall and make her usual rounds of questions, and read over as many local newspapers as she could find in hopes of seeing another copy of the one she'd glimpsed today. It was a fine plan. She had to...get off the deer first. This was a problem. She made him pause at a street corner where he leaned down to eat a weed off the edge of a stranger's garden.

Once on the ground, she could go where she wanted. But she would not be taking her two saddle packs with her unless she wanted to walk slowly and sweat. They would be unsupervised. She would be robbed. Wouldn't she? Had she walked past a boarding place where they would hold both steed and supplies for her? For how much money? She had to take care of an entire goddamned deer now. The storage of a deer was not part of her plans. Her plans had been excellent and worth a high grade, for she included food and money and clothing and sleepwear and medicine and all things that she needed. Or so it seemed. So it seemed. Sakura sat on her deer until the person whose garden her deer was eating politely asked her to leave.

It was by chance she passed a quick stable, a place to board horses and deer for a fee, and for under a day. She all but shoved the deer and his bags into it, and tried not to slam the door behind her. Now she was alone in the street with a small personal bag on her back, with the steel bag sticking out of the top, handle first, spiked head hidden. The street was open and its limp traffic moved indifferently past. Single-story shops were to the right, and two-story lodges and offices and brick buildings to her left, and she went this way to accomplish her mission. She walked on cobblestone streets, like in Tidusa. It was like being there, or being in Yuraka, even. She was by herself, going about business. This felt strange. She wore a smile and set to executing her plan.

The plan went so: She went to the city hall first, where a receptionist told her appointments had to be made in advance to see councilmen, and her mood softened when Sakura asked about refugees, but she still claimed to know nothing about such people in Calstoa so she recommended the local doctor's offices, and Sakura and the practitioner there had a thirty-minute wait, which she sat through, and then used her appointment for "stomach troubles" to ask the doctor in his office if he'd treated any refugees or folk with things like traveler's fatigue, shock, old burns, about which he disclosed that beyond patient confidentiality, he could tell her he'd never heard of such things, though he had heard about Konoha once in a newspaper article about the local meat packing industries seeing as good venison came from Nara deer, but Sakura left after this, and she examined newspapers on the Calstoa notice board, and saw papers from Gillen just east and inland from here, and Tidusa, and a tiny monthly one-page paper from Himahima north of here, and they all said nothing worthwhile, and Sakura went to fetch her stag, and then she left Calstoa, another worthless town.

' _All of this is worthless, this place is worthless, I'm wasting my—'_ she thought, looking between the stag's antlers, and chewed her inner cheeks to distract herself. Her back was hurting now and she had been sweating walking around town, and it occurred to her that her nightwear undergarments were crammed at the very bottom of one of the saddle packs and she'd have to dig before she went to bed, and there were no more towns for two more days, and for all of this ground covered and brainless, useless idiots she talked to and nice people who couldn't help her at all, nothing was happening.

She might well have stayed in Yuraka, and gotten a promotion. She might have become better friends with Temari after all. Omoi might have come back for her. He might have actually wanted her. She thought about him for a while. She hadn't thought of him in a long time, even when she went past candy shops and saw lollipops.

The terrain moved quietly by under her steed's hoof. The road stayed mostly by the sea but leaned inland at times to swerve around bursts of rock or tangled trees. Sometimes there were thick, deciduous trees on her right and sometimes plains where the trees hung further back. A postman on his pony walked by, burdened by heavier packages than her deer carried, and he waved nicely at her as he passed. Sakura smiled and bid him good day, and asked where he was going and he said Tidusa. By the time he was gone she was growling at herself for not asking from where he'd come. All the time a dirt road carved by a hundred long-gone wagon wheels stayed long ahead of her. The sun started to set on her left and painted the sea in warm streaks of color and art and she didn't care.

Sakura didn't know what she cared about all of a sudden. She tugged the reins twice to stop her steed when the sea was quite far off to the left and the trees were quite far off to the right. Her back was hurting more strongly and stretching was barely denting the ache. And her stag's walk was slowing. She hopped off the stag and looked around. Nobody here, no towns for hours more. Himahima was nearest and it didn't even have an inn. She didn't have a shower. She grabbed the reins and started leading the deer away towards the trees, because she might as well.

She tied his reins to a low-hanging branch, which took a while to find, and removed his saddle and blanket. She grabbed branches and started a fire the way Konoha School taught her since she was seven. Soon she'd dig out the traveler's pan and make eggs, and perhaps bacon, too. The deer was grazing and she threw in some onion grass near where he chewed and stood by him. He chewed slowly. He seemed mildly interested in the onion grass but chose to save it for later. Her sleepwear was at the bottom of the first saddle bag. A closer inspection of the area showed that none of the trees nearby had branches thick enough for her to sleep on, at least that she could see from this angle. Would she have put out this fire and move? Why did she first think to sleep in a tree instead of on the damn ground like anyone else camping in the woods would do?

Sakura scratched a sudden itch on her back and hip. "How...how the hell did I do this," she muttered to herself.

The itch was in her brain as well. Her memories of living in the woods during the first month and a half after Konoha, sometimes hopping into and out of towns, sleeping in occasional barns for labor and jars of fruit or bacon, did not have this tint of bewilderment in them. She had rarely itched. She had just moved, just _done_ it, she'd rarely...found it—unpleasant.

' _I slept in trees, right, Mom?'_ she thought, for she had used to sleep in trees in the vast space between Konoha and Yuraka and talk to her mom. And others. _'I don't remember feeling like...like it was bad? This is bad. This is like, annoying.'_ The words faded away into pictures, nay, feelings, textures of bed sheets and a mattress underneath that she was used to.

Sakura jumped almost two feet in the air and landed almost turned entirely around, when the buck barked at her. The sound was bark- _like_ at least. He was out of onion grass and was looking to her for more material to graze upon. Sakura's shoes were off at this point, and she put them back on to untie the buck, put out her fire, close the saddle pack, and move. Thank goodness she had her tiny, one-bulb flashlight. That night, she did sleep in a tree, with a little cloth bundle for a pillow. And at half past one that morning, she fell out of the tree and landed on her side. She felt like—like someone had kicked her. Hard, rudely, telling her to get the fuck up and go inside the house, girly. Are you a virgin?

" _Gghhh,_ " Sakura hissed into grass and into the root that had pushed into her stomach. Without thinking, she was crying already, sobbing without breathing. She finally did breathe, and keened a long, high noise into the grass. The buck took a step back from her.

In the morning, Sakura's traveling pan and sleepwear were packed up, she had used one mint cooling wipe to clean her face and body a bit, and comb her hair, and the night was at least over and they could go on already, and just hurry up. The buck mutely let her put his saddle blanket and saddle on again, and they were off. The sun had just recently come up and her miserable thoughts from before were rested and ready to gnaw again. She knew what they were, intimately. In trying to avoid them and push them back, she felt their outlines constantly. She knew without naming it, without actually thinking it.

She imagined a map in her head, pretending to place tacks and underline names with her fingers. She knew the towns along this northward path, and towns more inland from the coastal Tidusa. She also knew that her deer needed a name already. He had been very complacent for her demands so far, and he was from some important racer's bloodline before he'd been labeled as venison for being too lazy or fat or weak or whatever, so he deserved something strong and fine, like a butler. She asked for Ms. Hanare's opinion, since she'd naming routines at her little dance studio for many years. Soon she was telling Ms. Hanare about eucalyptus oil, an in-a-pinch solution to asthmatic lungs, because they cooled inflammation—and she felt cool herself, struck cold even, when her stag without a name stopped talking and turned his head to look behind them.

Sakura's thoughts were thrown out and away from her and she thought, as she had been thinking for a long time, _'It's Hidan,'_ and she twisted round to look.

They were on the slope of a trail and looking downhill into a plain dotted with uneven shrubs and smears of lifeless dirt. Nothing moved in these places. There was no breeze and no moving wildlife, and then there was for a moment as a gust of wind stirred two frogs to motion. The path was empty.

"What? What is it?" she asked the deer, and kept half-turning to see his face. His eyes examined the plain nearest the road, or perhaps only the road. What he saw or heard, Sakura could not.

They were miles from other folk and other settlements. Miles from the place where Sakura hopped a passenger carriage to a town that didn't exist and a man pointed a gun at her and she wanted to cry when he talked to her. She hadn't thought about him in a long time. In Tidusa, even in Yuraka, he seemed far away. He could not come into a town to take her, where policemen were and people were watching. He could never. That thought spurred her heart into sprinting, her lungs to needing big swallows of air. He was too much of an awful, brain-dead fool to ever try to find her again. That was over now, she was a woman grown and she'd had jobs and it was beyond her. It was all beyond her, she was fine.

She was fine, the tree last night was fine. She'd readied herself for this journey when she fled Tidusa. "I've made many preparations," she gasped aloud. Her lips smacked in spots like they had never touched each other before. The deer twitched its ears at its rider's noises.

She grabbed at his reins. "Go, go, sir, let's go! Now!"

That wise deer ran. The quiet plain behind blurred away as his swift, lean legs pounded the dirt and swept it all behind them. Sakura leaned forward in the saddle, legs curled up as taught. Her stag galloped up the little slope and over without a hitch in his breath. And he kept going. The air pushed her hair behind her.

Over the ridge, the path curved even more inland and they pulled away from what little sounds of the sea remained on the air. Spurs of rock appeared at random on both sides of the path and Sakura stared down each one, daring them to hide something from her, and breathed out when they passed. They climbed another ridge, rode along the spine of a third, and then dipped down slightly into a shallow valley. Once trees splashed them with shadows and then pulled them away, and their eyes had to adjust to bright light when it came again.

This barely functional path before them was their only direction, and Sakura's only meaning. She was jobless now and not nestled in a town now and alone now. She was directionless now. Available to go anywhere now.

Jump off a cliff now, return and beg for her job back now, fall off the deer and tear her clothes off right now and scream and scream and it wouldn't matter.

She was alone and sitting on a fucking deer. Great God, she'd bought a deer to make herself feel better and no one in the world was there to ask her why.

She gasped, or coughed. Something spat out of her throat where she'd been forced to hold it. The deer did not react, or tire. But she was tiring. The next few minutes she checked and checked the path behind them, and the plain and any trees, and rocks that might hide things, and all of them refused to show her anything. Even when the trees came back and they were in the woods again, there was nothing to see nor hear, but for one skittering squirrel. And that easygoing, surprised squirrel made her smile.

Sakura tugged the reins to slow him to a trot, and tugged again to have him walk. He veered off the path to a glimmering line downhill, walking down a slope of thinning grass. At the bottom, a stream, wide as a house. Sakura's eyed widened a bit; she hadn't noticed it over there at all. But grateful she was indeed. She slid off the saddle and fell onto one knee like a knight. She stayed in this pose for a moment, thinking about knights. She did have a bat, though not a sword, and this giant red deer for a steed. A failure of a racer, for some ridiculous reason.

The stag passed her and dropped his head to drink, almost slapping her with the blunt side of one of his tines. She did not share his urgent thirst, but the urgency of the many things she'd felt in the saddle were still humming in her and on her. She flipped open the saddle pack on her side and plucked out her comb and streamed it through her windblown hair. She thought about Ms. Hanare, and Omoi. She calmed.

She calmed enough that she stopped noticing the quickness of her own breath. Her eyes darted to the other side of the stream, where the trees were thicker and the banks made of rocky edges and mossy stones rather than sand. The trees went on endlessly that way. Branches twitched. Hundreds of leaves moved at once.

Her stag walked in a slow, rounding crescent to leave the water and lumbered past her up the little hill again. Sakura wondered at the possibility of him bolting, leaving her alone, without supplies. The clothes on her back, some coins sewed into secret pockets and a comb. He wouldn't do that, hopefully. A few seconds more of watching proved that he intended only to stand there, looking away from her.

He was looking at the opposite riverbank. She looked, too. She saw Skullface. She recognized him immediately.

The creek was quiet and the breeze was quiet and Sakura heard absolutely nothing. She was eaten. The sight of the creature reanimated nightmares that had only been scantily buried. The creature was alive, not buried, and kept standing there after several blinks and failures of her lungs to take in air. Skullface was taller than a moose, fully black. Its face was no longer white and skeletal, but a flesh-and-blood head with black skin and nostrils.

 _It has a real head a real head. It never left or died it's here it's here_

It was here. It had grown and changed since she saw it last, over a year ago. The eyes were perfect black and distinguishable from the fur around them only by a rounded shimmer, sunlight glinting on _life._ That red color brighter than sunset was gone. Under those eyes were the taloned feet like eagle claws crushing the fragile bones of a fish or a man. The eyes were still perfect circles. The head was dog-like, or dog-like was her closest approximation to that alien shape. The scars on the back cutting into the fur were still there.

The eyes were so bright she saw them as perfect circles even across a river, like they were lit by electricity instead of life. And pointed red pupils that grew and they grew and grew. The points of red enlarged to take up the whole iris and sclera beyond it. She was removed from herself, from all but the beast.

The red ate through the black in front of her. Its whole eyes were red. More than its shape or its flesh-bound head or the life-ending talons she saw the red, red. Red. Eyes.

The mouth opened just slightly and she, a young girl who didn't remember her name, exhaled. She saw it exhale, too. The growing and shrinking sides to indicate expanding lungs and breath. The indication that it was alive, like her, undeservedly.

She heard a sloppy, wet sound. Choking man. She saw a house fall down.

All her mind and body was shrunk only to its eyes and hers. She had nothing, was nothing, across her whole life and her sweating and straining up till now was merelynoise on the way to death. All she had now was that ability to lock gazes with the predator upon her, that it might keep away if she did not move or blink. _It'll take me now and everything I've tried to do will be—_

— _Pathetic,_ she understood without understanding the spoken word. _Pathetic_ she knew and thought about and was. Her whole life was the past year and a half or so, which seemed to make up all the life she could remember in that moment. It was made up of her always-moving legs and sore muscles and twitches of her skin and eyes going here, there, Hidan is coming, reading charts for patients for hospital for job for hospital for rashes and infections and steroids and complaints from strangers.

Her throat closed completely when the creature's mouth began to close, and stopped just shy of it. It was, was a movement, nay, a humanlike _expression,_ which she recognized. She regretted speaking. Looking at it. Learning to speak.

Feeling more regret, she said aloud, projecting over the river, "Leave me alone. Begone." Bold words for a dead body, which she knew she was and had been since the day in April when everything else in her life had died.

One of the feet moved forward. She gasped long and loud, wanting to move her hands, only making convulsing fists. Her fingernails punched into her skin when the mouth opened again and it barked out a hard, short, angry roar at her.

She hurt. Her hands hurt and so she remembered that they existed. Fingers loosened and curled slightly out from the palm again, as they did naturally.

Eventually the mouth opened again. But her eyes didn't watch that black hole or hear its cry just then. She broke gazes with the beast and thus broke in half her one protection against its charging her. She looked next to it, to a smothering group of yew branches.

Another one. Lifting its head. The head of a bird, and the same giant body below. It had been there all the while, watching. It crouched like a cat. It had a cat's tail.

Sakura could not stand it. She pivoted on one heel, slapping a hand over her mouth, and sped up the little slope to her stock-still buck. Her heart beat so powerfully it tipped her torso forward.

One of those taloned feet splashed into the river and that sound was then smothered by a shrieking roar. The sound stabbed into her, pushed into her skin and pulled up goosebumps, and beat her back like heat of the sun. She sprinted.

Sakura sprinted the last few steps and almost jumped into the saddle. She might have landed a belly-flop, but she also would have fallen. She jumped upward instead, landing the necessary left foot into a stirrup and the right leg mostly over his back.

Then she screamed, "GO!"

The buck's feet stomped into the ground for one second, preparing to jump-launch forward. At the same time, there was a sound of heavy bodily impact. One of the beasts had struck something, pushed something. Sakura would never know. She shot forward like a fired holiday rocket as her buck started an instant gallop. As he was about to cross the dirt road entirely and make for the woods on the opposite side, Sakura experienced her last moment of clarity for that day and yanked the reins hard and harsh to the left to swing him back towards the road. He swung that way, and then swung back, and then they were running. Racing.

' _Great god take them away to hell,'_ she cried in her mind. She cried it and cried it and cried many things like it, but inside her head it was all the same volume. Outside, she was not the same. Her toes curled inside her shoes, legs trembled, and she leaned over her stag like a jockey would, for she was dependent on winning and winning was escaping for they were behind her. They must be. She did not dare look and could not hear even the stag's hoofbeats underneath her even though she felt them.

"Not real," she gasped, nearly gagged. _Not real_ was like The Paper House and that pain-but-not-enough-pain feeling when she had slammed her forehead into a wall. She wanted that. She wanted to thrash. But now, could not. Dare not impair the stag's run. Oh, he shot like an arrow and the beat of his hoofbeats struck her like a hammer. "Save me, save me, _please._ "

The stag huffed as they faced an incline but he strode up with no change in pace. Once they broke over the ridge of that hill, harsh summer sunlight hit them and Sakura's eyes began to dribble tears. Too frantic to wipe them, she thought the word, ' _Think,'_ over and over again and could not. Do so.

The beasts were real and they had left Konoha like her. They were here. Here here. Here was hundreds of miles away. She had walked to get here. How had they gotten here? Here? To her? She was alone. She was on a deer alone, she had bags and no job. Where was Himahima, what direction.

Direction? Where was she going now? Wherever the deer wanted. No inn in Himahima. Sleep in a barn. Sleep in someone's kitchen if she begged and begged. God, please. God, please take them _away! Burn them!_

The deer ran without tiring. Sakura became a part of his run. She leaned with him into any turns and kept her legs up for him. She leaned forward when he needed to go up a slope, and down to his body when they went downhill. Once, not thinking about it, she turned her head to look back. She looked at the empty fields and a tiny spring and saw nothing.

Sakura and her deer sprinted through a town of four hundred called Himahima and did not stop there. Someone yelled at her and some men about town looked at her funny as she went past, but she did not hear any of them or remember any faces.

' _I need to get out of here,'_ she'd been thinking for a while. She had dim awareness of bodily cramps and dumbly accepted the pain of them. _'I need to get out. Out of their way. I need to leave. Oh god, where are you? Ino?'_

"Inoo," Sakura said out loud, and she swayed slightly. Her face twisted tight while she held in a sob. It burst out of her anyway. "Oh my god, Ino, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I can't!"

' _I've got to do something,'_ she thought eventually, after half an hour of haze. But she did nothing but say this phrase and blink through some tears. She leaned this way and that for her stag.

' _I—I—I don't understand, I don't,'_ she thought after that. Then, someone said in her, for her, _'It, it found me. The It-Man found me after so long I couldn't hide he found me.'_

 _You can shut your fucking mouth. Shut up. I'll push a hole into your skull if you say one more word._

 _You were lucky to push a hole in the skull of the slug creature and you'll never do it again. Your mom is dead and the thing ate her head first and then her legs. You're next. Scream._

 _I'm not going to die I'm NOT!_

The deer tossed his head when she finally turned and vomited over his side. The half-made contents of her stomach splashed into grass and disappeared behind them. Sakura spat the rest of it out of her mouth. She kept spitting till she couldn't feel the leftover streaks of filth in her mouth.

 _I've got to go somewhere,_ she thought and said. The deer was flagging now. Maybe his adrenaline was out, too. It was almost dusk now.

Sakura had turned inland now instead of staying on the most coastal path, and there were two little towns ahead. Not a ten minute stroll from each other. Her deer slowed to an awkward speed-walk for but a few steps and then a regular, slow walk where he leaned his own head down and gagged and heaved. Sakura patted his stomach. They walked like this through the first town. They walked with their heads up into the second one. Sakura found a house with a tiny stable not far from the shopping district. She offered more than she ought for the chance to board her stag in the stable and sleep on the hay with him. The man shrugged and told her it was all right.

Like the old days, Sakura lay down and slept in a barn.

* * *

The next day was beautiful and hot. She washed herself with fresh water meant for horses. She rinsed her clothes in well water and sat on a stony spot in barn, naked and surrounded by horses, waiting for them to dry. She read one of her books, _Nelsandra Nigh Morning,_ starting from chapter 6, where Sandra started to train the cat familiars. She bathed the deer. Maybe his name was Arrow or Hammer. Something.

It was before noon, and the plans she'd had before were now shattered and her desire for food and water was shattered. Yet there remained a clinical, non-thinking gear of her brain that turned enough to impress on her the need of sustenance for patient recovery, and so she went to a place that smelled like food. There was a group of people inside having a lively discussion around a man holding a book and laughing at shiny things on the table.

One of their number was standing. Sakura said, "Excuse me, please," and pushed Tsunade Senju's shoulder as she went by. Tsunade ignored her and told the man sitting by her what style of apartment building he would soon be buying for her.

' _Oh, that's—'_ Sakura Haruno's brain began to say, and then quit. She did not care that Tsunade, her boss's boss, was here in this place and she didn't care about anything except a nice chicken and rice meal, which she ordered and took to a table by herself. _'Rice is carbs. Carbs. I need energy. My legs hurt. This sauce is lovely. Wow, I love it.'_

For about four minutes, Sakura's brain perceived nothing but chicken and rice and the warm, chewed-up meal of it that she swished around in her mouth. Cool water washed it down. She drank three glasses. After the waiter went away for the second time, the wooden table she was eating at started to levitate and smacked her lightly in the chin as it floated.

Tsunade was lifting it. Sakura held a hand to her bumped chin. "Hey, we need a second table for a minute. Here's your food." Sakura's eyes bulged when the table then leaned towards her, showing more and more surface, and then her bowl began to slide towards her. She barely caught it. And then she grabbed at the side of the table. A vein in her wrist bulged when it nearly pulled away from her but she kept it near.

"I'm _using_ this, get another one," she said, clutching the bowl and her damned restaurant table. Her legs were crossed, feeling about as dead as they had yesterday astride her deer.

Tsunade Senju dropped her end of the table and its legs slammed into the floor, leaving scrapes on the floorboards and a hard clash in their ears. She did not wear her surgery whites, or her green tunic from all her best photos. She wore pale gold, no sleeves, open shoes, violet eyeshadow and signs of light drunkenness. Wearing all these things, she leaned across the fumbled table, setting her open hands on it.

"Don't you work for me?" she asked, frowning.

"Not recently." Sakura said. Her legs were feeling less dead, as was most of her. Their one miniature conversion on a rooftop felt very near and embarrassing.

"I remember that hair. Extra hand from Yuraka. You little rat, you bailed on us."

"I quit and gave adequate notice, can I eat my damn lunch, please? There's lots of free tables!"

"This one has a one-percent grade on this side!" Tsunade whispered. She leaned even further forward and Sakura had to acknowledge the excessive cleavage her gold gown was showing and pushing towards her face. "You wanna win at the dinosaur kingdom, you play on this one, your pieces will always roll long! You any good at dice?"

' _I slept for one hour last night go the fuck away!'_

"Rai is using tyrannosaurus pieces, he's gonna sink me unless I got another player to help carry the battle. BAM! Fatal meteor strike. Dead."

' _I want my MOM!'_

"Your breath is a fatal meteor strike," Sakura blurted. She kept talking. "Just take the table, I don't care." She pushed out of her chair and sought the opposite end of the room that had a small wall to perhaps mildly shield her from this shit and the rude horseshit she'd just said to Tsunade Senju, who could have fired her last week.

Sakura only heard the sound of the table scraping again, and then a loud _BAM!_ as it landed elsewhere. Tsunade sat near it to take her dinosaurs to victory or death. Sakura heard parts of this nonsense and it was filtered into every other loud thought she was fighting to push away. Tsunade Senju had followed her here like the beasts that ate her mother had followed her here, Zabuza was right, they were after her like the final victim of a siege. Her travels were meandering _nothing_ , money didn't help, sprinting arrow deer worthless her bat and brass knuckles like toys did nothing

you're alive you're an embarrassment—

she ran and ran for months and nothing was there, lee would never kiss her or forgive her—CIRCUS CUNT—she would die and Hidan. Hidan was. Coming next. Everything else had stayed with her but he was the only thing that hadn't caught up with her yet but if everything else did then. He would come next. Eventually.

 _I don't wanna die. I'm far away. I'm far away._

"Please. Can I have another. Please."

"Eh, sorry?"

"Another bowl, please. Sauce."

"Sweet chicken and rice bowl, okay, with sauce, you mean? Or no sauce?"

"Sauce. Yes. It—really good. Thanks."

"Uh, yes. Sure, miss. Ten minutes, please."

"Yes."

 _I'm gonna throw up._

She rose from the booth in the wall she'd settled in, and hobbled to where the waiter leaned against a brick support beam. She leaned a little on it, too, and asked them to please hold her food for fifteen minutes, for she had to go on a quick errand. The waiter insisted that if she wasn't back in half an hour, the food would be trashed or fed to some pigs. Sakura said that that was just fine and she would be back soon.

Sakura speed-walked out the front door, past Tsunade and her dinosaur campaign. The cool of the building transformed into unfiltered outdoor heat in just one step. Sakura knew she wouldn't last many steps. Maybe no steps. Half a dozen townsfolk went by the restaurant's stone porch on their hurried way somewhere, and she could not have stepped down to join them if she'd wanted to. Her stomach full, and yet no energy. No thoughts even though her head was full of this intrusive, cotton-like _nothing,_ full of what? Full of what? What was happening? How had she gotten here, how in God's name had she ever been allowed to meander, to fail?

More townsfolk walked by and she whimpered. She longed to have friends. To have Ino. To have Ino. To hold Ino. To give all her love and laughter and her remaining little bone-marrow-bits of strength to Ino, who deserved them.

' _Ino,'_ Sakura moaned in her empty mindscape as she looked up. She looked southwards where the street ended and abruptly became empty grass and between her and that cutoff of civilization was another trio of townsfolk running towards her. Behind them, a pair of monsters.

' _Ino?'_ Sakura asked herself as she looked on the shape of these things. They were familiar things. Familiar from her nightmares this past night where she only dreamed instead of slept. It was the shape of Skullface, again, and another bird-headed beast. Walking in the street like demons into the real world.

"Ohh. Oh, please," Sakura said to herself while no one heard. So foreign and transformed was her mind that she did not at all recognize the foolishness of staying in that spot, watching them approach her.

The screaming of the locals had passed into her utterly unprocessed and inconsequential. When folk began sprinting into doorways and one sprinted up a rope ladder into a window and doors began slamming _bam! bam! bam!_ they were as soft and monotonous as the hundred moving branches in the woods.

Skullface carried a man in its mouth, with its jaws closed over the torso while the limbs, hair, and straps of his equipment vest all hung. Sakura's body hung suspended in space when she recognized the color of the hair and design of the vest as belonging to Suigetsu, who had heard the story of Konoha through Zabuza while she sat quietly, uselessly, next to him.

The beast approached with another of its kind, another with a bird's head and the legs and paws of a large feline. They had feline tails that moved about behind them. They had fur on their necks and pieces of black sticking out from their bodies that looked like feathers. She had more money than she'd ever had in her life hidden in a pile of hay in a barn half a mile from her. She felt like a fool on a stage where everyone around her knew she was in a fantastic play. She stopped breathing and forgot her own name.

There were punctures in the man's trousers, ripped sections where there were no trousers at all, and a long line of knives above it: the teeth of the beast's upper jaw. The longest ones were the length of her hand.

The mouth opened slowly, closed slowly. She heard a voice so large and deep and near: "Are you following me?"

She was not, was not understanding, was not truly present in that moment in the street in a town she didn't know with the shadows of man-eaters over her. When she entered this conversation and this place, she was still a walking dream.

"I am not. I would never," she said, quietly. "I'm not traveling the world. For _you._ " The last word came out as a cobra's hateful hiss with strength she had imagined into existence.

It read none of her hate. It said, "I have never met a human twice before. Except. You." Pause. Sakura felt. Afraid. "I am. Familiar with you. I need you to speak for me. I need to speak to your kind."

Her hair blew out past her ears and behind her when it exhaled a warm wind over her body. She smelled smoking firewood. Her eyes closed against the gust for a moment and then opened. She was looking at the beast again, so easily.

"Tiny beast from the south," it said, and she felt insulted. Humiliated. "Take this man that we deposit. And never send another hunter after me again. I am not hunted. I am not pursued." He paused. The maw of the beast had widened and nearly shut only twice, for all the words projecting from that throat. "Turn around and tell your kin. I will see you do it."

"Why do you think I'm following you?" she said in disbelief. Her arms and torso were starting to shake. She felt a sort of—energy. "You monster. I don't know who sent a hunter after you. I don't care. You deserve it. If you eat me, I'll cut your throat on the way down. Do it. I'm ready."

The edges of the lips pulled up and showed a thin line of gums beneath them. The eyes. Were. Moons of their own. "You are lucky to have such strong little twig limbs to make it this far. Since then. Since wraiths came to your dwelling to eat it."

" _You_ came to eat it!" she barked at it. "You devil! Eat me, I dare you!"

"You are alive and here because of me. You waste of life!" it barked, and she helplessly gasped aloud at the open mouth, its body big enough to crush her, leaning down towards her. "My clan killed the wraiths that appeared there. By chance we were near. By luck you came to blows with a weak worm too limp to hold its head upright and so you could win. You owe me your life and more, so turn around and _talk_ to your kind, or I will take my debt back right now."

She shivered all over. "No. You owe me my life _back_."

The moons watched her and dared her to move at all. But by now Sakura feared guilt more than death.

"I killed the worm while you _watched._ You did nothing for me. You didn't stop what happened. I made it this far of my own will and strength. No one and nothing can prove these things you're saying and I won't—" She was superhuman now, talking with the ungodly, and with those powers she heard a quiet sound from a long way away, at the restaurant she'd left behind.

Sakura whirled around and saw Tsunade aiming a gun. She froze. "Stay back, Ino!" And Tsunade froze, too. Sakura waved her hands and aimed her voice down the street and at the windows where many guns were pointed at her head. "They brought Suigetsu! He's alive! Don't shoot! Do not shoot!"

Not a shot was fired, yet. She stopped waving her hands. The beasts were still outside of her vision. Behind her. She could feel their warm breath even now. They were real beasts staring at her unprotected back. And even though she did not see them, there were gunmen, or strangers with guns, pointing at her from afar. This creature thought they would shoot. She would be shot. A town full of Hidans. Men who would shoot her. Faster than she could be eaten. Ripped to shreds. Ripped.

Sakura bit her tongue and then her cheek, and then her inner lips to keep from screaming aloud in the street. Her heartbeat was tipping her body forward again. There was an aggressive itching from beneath her skin. She felt hives.

The man on the ground was the only thing she felt was safe from teeth and bullets and brutalization that any of them would do to her. She looked down at her own feet, barely seeing his shadow. "Please. Let. Let me take the hunter," she said, only to fill the silence behind her. "They aren't shooting. Let me take him to safety. He won't be able to walk without help. He won't hunt you." _For many weeks_ was a fact she omitted.

"His bloodspill is massive for a little man. And fresh."

"His blood is clotting. And his spine is undamaged. I can work to save him." The beasts did not respond. Sakura's mouth was bleeding and hurting and she needed it else she would fall. "I'm trained in the medical sciences."

One of the beasts made a clicking noise behind her but it was too difficult to tell which one. It was too difficult to think that she was at gunpoint at her friend and threatened with dismemberment at the back, she had a deer waiting for her at that barn and Tsunade was here, and it all was, was, WAS—

It didn't matter what it was. It didn't matter. It just didn't. Sakura knew what really mattered. And for it, her confidence was boundless, she knew it was. It was so.

She tbowed her head, and fought to stand up straight again. Two beasts of hell and a little town full of strangers with guns watched her gasp and fumble. She turned around again, still moving right. The bird-headed beast came back into her vision first, and then Skullface.

"Describe one of my kind who fled my home that day, and I'll believe your words. I know I'm not the only survivor. If you were there. Killing the wraiths, like you say...you must have seen people running away."

There came that clicking noise again, but a softer tone. It was the catbird. But Skullface's eyes were spinning. The tiny black dots within his eyes swirled like a hand turning a wheel. Sakura took half a step back in instinctive alarm. "I saw. A group of yours. An old male with one eye covered by skins on his head." Sakura's mind, too, turned like a wheel. She took that half-step back again and her mouth was open in immediate awe. "Surrounded by younger males. All fleeing."

"That could be...Mayor Danzo," Sakura gasped. "And, and his gunmen squadron! Who else did you see?"

The swirling eye spectacle stopped. "You said one."

"I'll tell the townsfolk another message if you want," she said quickly. "I, I believe you. You're not one of those things that...that chased me out. I'm willing to speak for you if you still need it." That promise was chilling, and much bigger than her words or the confident posture and eye contact she was conjuring just then. But it was her last few moments of conjuring. She was waking up.

The beast lifted its head. The jaws were still slightly parted and still. Sakura's imagined calm tore through when she realized it could _eat her—_ "That would be very useful to me. Another time."

Was this a dream? Was this fake? This beast from Konoha had found her. Her hand spasmed and the fingers pinched into the skin and her eyes twitched at the pain. "Then please keep your word as well."

"Hnn," it said, and the tail behind it swished around. "I saw...many of yours escape the boundaries of the place."

 _Is this real? Am I real? Great god, will you let me go home?_

"I remember a male in green skins."

 _Lee. Wears. Green._

"He was with another, but I don't remember the second runner. There were a good number of them, some alone, some in groups. I wouldn't know them if I saw them again. And I don't know how far they reached before being hunted."

 _I don't want to be here! Why am I here? Why are they fucking talking to me! No!_

"Thank you," she whispered, though they heard well enough. A trained practice from her dead mother kicked in and she turned slightly to acknowledge the one that hadn't spoken to her at all. The one with a bird's head the size of a bear's, and little tufts of fur on its head like ears. "Both of you, for returning Suigetsu alive and speaking with me. It means a great deal."

 _Don't tell them your name you're going to die! You're going to die and these people will watch!_

She was going to scream.

"I am glad. For your. Serviccce," said the second one, while it dipped its head at her. Its voice was leaner and scratchier than the other's.

Sakura's own head jerked back, also bird-like. "Y-you talk, too?" she stated dumbly.

The bird dipped its head again, more slowly this time. "Difficult now," it said. "Cannot. Not for long." It ended this sentence with a coughing noise that pushed out the feathers on its neck, or his neck. It sounded male. Both of them did. Both of them had feathers and fur at the same time. The necks and front legs especially. They were unnatural amalgamations of animals. They played at civility and mercy. Were they still the It-Men?

"I am Madara," said the first one, whose head had used to be a bare skull but now wasn't. "I will see you a third time."

"Hm," Sakura said with a nod while she bit her tongue and teeth intermittently. "If...you must."

 _NO NO NO! NO! NO! NO! NOOO! NOOO! NO!_

It had a name. _He_ had a name. He had human's speech without lips or tongue it should require. He had simulations of emotions like anger and dismissiveness, and he knew of threats and debts and knew the story of Konoha like she did. It was unholy. It dared to take on these things that were hers and her people's and wear them like costume props. Her life was only a prop, now. She held it up and pretended she had a real one like a masquerade or a moneyhungry circus cunt.

Those red moons moved across the space above her as the beast called Madara moved his head. As he moved his legs round as well the whole body finally turned and Sakura saw a familiar profile of him. Last year, she had seen his left side as he walked up a street that intersected the place where she'd encountered the worm. It had watched her from a similar angle, though further away. And it had a gender, like real animals with brains and blood were.

The catbird thing turned too in Madara's place and showed her a side profile of himself. Sakura saw his talons that could have wrapped around her head, and the back feet that were like lion's paws. Every part of him could have crushed her. Had he been there in the town, too? Out of her sight as she ran, like everyone else she knew?

This time there was no expression to be read on its face. The look he gave her lasted a few seconds and then it completed its turn and walked away down the street. There were only three more buildings left on either side of the street before they all ended, and the road ended, and the town immediately gave way to a gentle hill sloping down to fields and livestock yards that went on for miles. Madara's head and then his tail disappeared at the edge of the hill, just out of sight.

"Ggh," went Sakura's throat as it gurgled and choked itself. She lifted a hand and held it there, and held the other at her chest where she pressed it against her heart.

The catbird creature went next and curved his body over the edge of that hill. It dipped down and the spine curved and the feline tail was swallowed up by the little horizon and neither of the monsters were visible anymore, but they were there. If they only walked, it could be near to an hour before they were gone from that massive field and out of her vision entirely.

"Oh god," Sakura said. Her hands shook against herself. Her knees shook against each other. Her rolling stomach that started in the restaurant had never left her all this time. She felt it again. She— "I'm not. Not, nnnm." What was she now? Cursed? More than before? Ino? Ino? Lee? 'Are you there? Talk to me talk to me let's talk please I'm so sick."

Only the last few buildings at the edge of town were in her field of vision. The rest of it was behind her and approaching her from behind. There were tiny scrapes of boots and sandals in the dirt and metallic tapping. Sakura heard little to none of it. While she called to Ino Yamanaka her legs lost strength, and she knew it. She tried to control her fall to her knees. She stayed upright as she lowered down. She rested her rear on her ankles and calves. She could not control her breathing.

She gasped. And gasped and gasped and gasped for air. She held her arms below the shoulder and squeezed and her lungs squeezed. Ino and Lee were not saying anything in her head.

Men ran past her. Gunmen. Not the man who had slapped her two years ago. Three. Strangers. One of them dropped to his knees faster than she had and began to feel about Suigetsu's twitching body. She began to crush her own arms and sobbed.

Another stranger appeared, two of them. Sakura's terrible choking sobs stopped when she saw the chamber of a shotgun pointing at her. The man holding it wore a hunter's vest. He pointed his gun at her. Right now, even now, she had not escaped men who held her at gunpoint like hunted animals. Like _Hidan._ She was a hunted animal.

"Do not fucking move," he said. There was a second one to her left. Two more shotguns looking down into her permeable flesh. She was shaking uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry! Please don't shoot! I, I said don't shoooot!" The man watched her bow her head and curl into herself as though her spine could not hold her upright.

He, too, was having trouble controlling his breathing. Truly his eye wasn't on the young woman but on the trio of men who'd rushed to the edge where the road met the fieldgrass to look downhill and see the beasts retreating. Their signals indicated safety and retreat. They were moving away, they had not changed direction. Sakura's loud crying made him look at her again, their shoulders tense and quivering, with terror written on him and her both.

"I'm trying really hard! Please don't shoot me _please!_ "

Four more appeared from Ludo's mart, one jumping onto the awning from the second floor window. They split into halves to add two more men and two more arms pointed at Sakura there on the ground.

Sakura saw the long shadows of the barrels on the ground. They ate into her shadow like monstrous leeches eager for her life. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she saw the skull-faced beast that called itself himself Madara and she had to look at light and dirt and guns again.

"I, I, Iiii—"

One of the shadows pulled from her. Pointed at her brain instead of her legs. Fear pulled her eyes up, out of her control. She stared into the barrel, close enough to kiss. Her jaw dropped open at it. She felt naked and on her back before it. Not humbled, only humiliated, only waiting to be killed. Great God. It was only after Konoha, that men pointed guns at other men.

The man that held the rifle had white hair like Suigetsu and a heavier build. A relative. A sibling. "You...witch. You were communing with those beasts."

Sakura's mind cried _'no'_ but she had no strength to speak the word aloud.

At her side was a pistol lying in wait for her to move. It shrieked, "Explain yourself! Right the fuck now!"

"They've _touched_ her!"

"They, they weren't—"

The rifle and the pistol shook and wobbled in the air as they argued. Sakura's pupils were rendered tiny in her head. They bounced as she followed them in the air.

"They knew her, they had to!" This was the pistol.

Another one appeared from the edge of the road, coming back. "They said they met her twice. The big one did."

The pistol rose up and shrieked, "Just SHUT UP!"

Sakura's pupil rose high and almost rolled back. She had to turn her head from the gun that had by accident whisked past a length of her hair. She looked away and up and saw a new body approaching, but it was unarmed. She watched this person.

"She's not a witch! Shayne, move, move it." The pistol moved away briskly at this command. The person took Shayne's place and then went forward, getting into the shotgun's personal space. "Stop pointing that at her, you brainless cur." This was Tsunade, in her golden top and fine trousers.

"I know this woman and I know her not to be a witch. A witch wouldn't be in my employ."

"Tsunade, she, she talked—"

"I heard what you heard. And I will understand its full truth before you commit her."

"We can't—"

A third man appeared. A fourth was behind. Tsunade said, "Remove your finger from the trigger before you speak to me."

Sakura heard more words from the both of them, and a third man, and a spooked horse nearby who had stood still as it ought when typical dark times came and could not handle the pressure any longer. Sakura heard accusations, and confusion and shouts. Tsunade created an answer for each one, out of nothing. Sakura was halfway to unraveling. Finally.

"To what, court? To jail?"

"I can still see them!"

After a short time, two human hands clasped onto her shoulders and pulled. She hissed in a breath between her teeth when their strength proved stronger than her limp body and forced her to stand. She caught herself and kept upright. She was looking into Tsunade's eyes.

"You are going to explain yourself and what was said between you and those things," she stated into Sakura's face. But Sakura knew this to be a request. Tsunade hoped she would not be a witch after all. "And then we will _all_ understand."

Sakura had pressed holes into her arms with her fingertips. She nodded, because she must. Tsunade pulled her away.

* * *

And that ends our first real confrontation. Things will ramp up from here.

This chapter had to accomplish two things: highlight Sakura's insistence that she can deal with her situation and the growing reality that she actually can't, and lead to an encounter where Madara and Sakura speak to each other and she becomes his "go-to human" so that they can actually interact in the future when they randomly meet on the road. I don't like this writing as much as Chapter One's writing and I still don't much like the end. Meant for a spooky and mystical encounter, turned into an uncomfortable Western standoff, but explanation on both their parts was needed.

The Uchiha "catbirds" are gryphons without wings (and the unnamed "catbird" was Obito). I liked this spin on their association with birds/crows and I like gryphons, so this is happening now. Madara doesn't have a bird head because I had the idea to make them gryphons rather than more vague "monsters" only after Chapter One was finished, because I'm stupid. He might change. Sakura's steed is a rideable red deer because one of my favorite books is _Fire Bringer_ which is an epic tale about talking red deer in ancient Scotland, in the vein of _Watership Down._ I didn't immediately realize it looks like I'm ripping off the red elk from Princess Mononoke because, again, I'm stupid. He was gonna be named Bruno because Sakura would jokingly think it's an ugly name that Ino would hate, but in my general dissatisfaction for this chapter, I strayed from the idea. His name is tbd.

I'm also kinda exhausted from my deployment and still living in a tent and hope to have a burst of writing when I'm home again and on leave. I'm excited for Chapter 3. The end of that chapter will contain the scene I visualized that made me want to write this in the first place, and also the reason for the title.

Thanks for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

This update took a year because I am scum and because shortly after the Chapter 2 update, I went into a spiral of Having a Real Bad Time and did not write at all for months. Despite the last update being July 2018, the majority of this chapter was written February to June 2019. I'm thinking of trying to cap my chapters at a slightly shorter wordcount than the typical...15 - 18k. Even if I don't, I'm less knocked-mercilessly-on-my-ass than I was before, and my writing should be overall faster now. Might have to share writing time with a fantasy Haikyuu wip, though, because I'm super into that now too.

This chapter is mostly Tsunade-and-Sakura relationship development, meaning the very important Uchiha event I wanted to fit into this chapter will have to wait for the end of Chapter 4. Enjoy.

* * *

The barrels of rifles and square mouths of pistols reached for Sakura and she became a soft, soft little girl when they did. She leaned into Tsunade's punishing grip on her arm even as her face cringed from its squeeze.

"Are you listening to me? Sakura?"

She said yes in a breathy squeak. She didn't know that Tsunade knew her name.

"If there is some explanation for why you know those beasts and that they would speak to you, you will tell me. You will answer my questions and tell the truth exclusively. If this is a mistake, if this isn't your fault—you need to tell me everything. I can't save you any other way."

 _Save me—_ she thought, and had thought yesterday when she and her stag ran here, but she still hadn't been saved. She raised her head and eyes to look at Tsunade, gasping. The woman's eyes and fingernails bore into her.

Two more of the armed men came back from the edge of town and made their way towards her, leaving three to watch at the edge of the road, five or six buildings back, from which they must be able to still see the beasts walking away.

Tsunade gripped Sakura's arm more. "And if you're lying, if you're in league with these netherworld monsters and try to hide that witchcraft from me or from the police, I will sit you in front of a firing squad—"

' _Oh my god, oh my god.'_

"—I know your face and your work ethic and Shizune vouched for you. And I want to believe you. But you need to convince everyone now, including me. Tell me everything you know and I will vouch for you."

"Yes. Yes," she said, but she was already folding in on herself. Trying to fall to the ground again. But Tsunade held by her one arm and made her walk. And the men followed behind her, and at her side, and one went in front of her. The restaurant that still had her chicken and rice meal was already behind them. She was pushed in the backs of her thighs by a rifle barrel and she yelped aloud. With a quicker, forced gait, Tsunade demanded she walk faster.

It was a slow summer day and her blood beat in her body faster than the air moved outside of her. The dip of her spine was a sweating stream and the men behind her must see the sweat stripe on her shirt even now. She was walked up four steps into a building with heavy oak doors. Through a foyer area with benches at the sides, then another pair of heavy oak doors. And into a room partway down a big hall. There was a long, backless bench that stood before a massive wooden desk and a bookshelf that smothered most of the wall.

They deposited her by the bench alone; she stood just in front of it and her knees weakened immediately so that she nearly fell into a sitting position on it. Tsunade and the five, armed men stood in front of the desk, with one of them leaning on its edge. The barrels of their guns were pointed down, or at her feet, and their eyes were all on her.

There was light and heat coming through a wide window on her left. She looked through shafts of light at the men and their guns in the darker half of the room. Glinting. Unmoving.

"Those things spoke to you in human tongues," Tsunade said first. "Why did they speak to you? Did you summon them into town?"

Sakura breathed a few times. Words did not come. Eventually one came out, released like a hard, dead limb loosening: " _No._ "

She thought they would demand more, and aim their barrels at her, but there was no movement among their guns or bodies or eyes. She was the only movement. "I don't think…they meant to, to, to speak to me in particular. I was. Was just. Walking there. And the, the big one, recognized me." Great god, her veins all but cringed inside her till she felt bloodless and dry. Dry and tight inside, sweat outside in every crevice of her.

There was a tiny flash of color in front of her, a warm honey-brown, which was actually Tsunade Senju's eyes blown wide by the sound of the blasphemy she had just heard. Like any man or woman of reason, she had not truly expected to hear the news that the beast had known Sakura in particular. Sakura, who was unaware of her own name and face and twitching hands, kept trying to breathe.

Male voices took over her empty silence.

"Where have you seen that beast before?" said the one who faced her sideways from the edge of the desk. "How were you able to see it when the sunlight was covered? Or have you stolen night glasses from some gunmen?"

He reasonably assumed it hadn't appeared before her in daylight, as that had never happened in life or stories or books or newspapers, except to her, in her cursed, goddamned life. Sakura missed a second question asked by another man. She was pulled back into awareness by light glinting on moving guns as many of the men adjusted positions slightly.

"Have you ever been to Crescent Moon Island in the east?" said one gun in a soft tone. "Taken a train, perhaps?"

" _Why_ the hell did it recognize you?" repeated a gun that opened its mouth at her. Sakura's fingers spasmed and hid inside of her limp fists.

"How long have you communed with it?"

"Did you tell it where Suigetsu was? How did you know where he was?"

"Are more of them coming? We need to arm. If more of them are coming, you'll stand in front of the firing line."

One of the guns opened its mouth at her and she saw straight down it like she was one of the monstrous things wandering in a town and a gunman was doing his job of killing her.

"She's fucking talking with living devils! I will blow off your damned head and drain your devil blood!"

"Baki? Baki!"

"I'm not," she said in a quiet breath that went unheard. She looked for Tsunade. Honey-brown, honey, chicken, rice. Sakura saw honey in her mind, not blood. "The devils were at my house. In. April."

One of the barrels drifted up and down, like a dog's head, listening to prey and danger and curiosities. "What?"

"They were at my house. My house is in, in, in Konoha. I'm Sakura Haruno. Hello, g-good to meet you all. Thank you. Tea."

Mebuki would serve coffee to guests, never tea. Only Dad and her liked tea. Raspberry tea, mint tea. What a dry mouth she has just now.

 _Take me home. I want to go home._

A question appeared in the pulsing void of the room, but Sakura did not hear it. She heard _house._ Maybe someone asked about her house. Maybe she said the word herself, for no reason.

"My house is in Konoha," she said again. "I-I'm sorry. I'm…from Konoha in the Fire Province. I saw them before. Last year it happened that they came in daylight. It was early morning and they broke into my house. Lots of houses. I, I ran. Dad said to go. I jumped out a window with my bat."

Their eyes were wider than their mouths. Just like her. She looked at their white, wide eyes and slack jaws. She imagined the wolflike snout of the skull-faced beast, Madara and its huge mouth. She described the skull-faced beast as he had been that day in Konoha. He had walked up the road nearby while she slammed her bat into a slug-like beast with brains and body like jelly.

"You fucking aren't—" said something, a man, named Zaku, unrecognizable to Sakura.

She thought of that dripping-wet slug that came out of the bakery and that how it had tried to open its jiggling mouth and consume her in multiple gulps. Had she not responded, nature would have taken its course as it does when lions snap the necks of antelope. Because there are always more faceless antelope and the wails and shrieking pain of one antelope mean nothing to anyone.

The thing she killed had wanted to eat her head and arms first, press them tight together in its throat, and it would have. Open the mouth wider and suck her in more. Her head is crunched and drowning deeper in the throat but her legs and feet loll out between the lips. Lips tight on her legs, suckling like a straw.

But that didn't happen. She told what happened.

She told about the body that felt like thick jelly and how it pushed up between her legs as she straddled it and her fists pressed, pressed, beat, beat, dents into the head. She told about climbing up the tree and she lived in houses and then she lived in a carriage for an afternoon and stole it and lived in Yuraka and she was a nurse and she begged Zabuza to listen to her and she begged Suigetsu to listen to her and she sought answers from the wide and bustling populous of Tidusa. But even there, there was nothing. Nothing but the sea lion-like creature she and Zabuza and his crew had moved on their way there, and the creature in the newspaper that the deer salesman had no wanted her to see. No friends or family, just death ever nearby.

Sakura breathed and breathed; she was the loudest sound among men and guns. She did not truly hear how she was panicking through it all, worse than she ever had.

"—I'm looking, that's all I'm doing, just looking around b-but, but, but I saw the big one yesterday by a river, and, and so I ran and I ran here and when I came out, came outside he just recognized me. He fucking talked to me, I can't believe these fucking things can talk, and I can't, I _can't_ go—"

She was the loudest sound.

Until: "Why didn't you go back?"

Small Sakura quieted her heaving breaths. Honey-brown Tsunade was in front of her, almost in the light.

"Go…b-backwhere?" Sakura said dumbly, hoarsely.

"Why didn't you return to Konoha once the dark time was over? When regular sunlight came back and the creatures were gone, you could have looked for survivors in the town."

This thought was dream-like and had never once appeared in her mind. But it was there now. A tumor.

"Be…" She paused, not thinking, but trying. "Because. The monsters were there. They could. Still." No more words came out.

Tsunade waited.

Sakura existed on that bench in a courthouse and existed in the tree outside of Konoha over a year into the past. They had come in sunlight and were still there when the dark time came. She knew that because while she was in the tree, she could still hear them moving and hear the people moving. When the light started coming back, she was not listening, or couldn't remember hearing them. But some men had passed nearby, running, and she heard them firing rifles from the school. At something.

 _I haven't seen practice rifles in…in a long time.'_ It was then, shortly after the light returned, that she had climbed down the tree and walked away instead of walking home. Because if they had appeared in natural light, there was no reason to believe that they would disappear in it, like they _should._ No reason to believe things were safe because daylight was back. And if there were survivors in Konoha who cowered under their beds to survive, there was no way in hell they would stay there. In that tainted rubble full of body parts. Marked by death. That was what she should have said.

"I don't. I don't want. Wouldn't go back," she said instead.

"If not after the sun returned, you could have gone back home after those days you spent in Iwa," the celebrity woman accused, angry furrows in her brow and nose. "You're so sure survivors made it out of the town, but what about survivors _in_ the town? Hiding in basements, under beds? I wonder for what reason you conveniently exclude people who survived by staying put, of which there must be some. There's no way only runners like you made it."

Now she was rocking back and forth, an inch backward, an inch forward, moved by her oppressive heartbeat. Her mouth was open, her mind was split as though by a crack of her spiked bat, open to the air.

 _What if Ino lived and the creatures faded away and she was at home the whole time WHY DID I FUCKING LEAVE?_

"Some friend you are to poor Ino, she might have made it and you left her. And who knows how many others. Do you care what happened to those people?"

Sakura's body twitched, rolled in fire. Hives grew on the skin of her arms.

Nearby: the smooth scrape of gloves rustling over the shaft of a gun that could kill her. Worthless.

"Part of the population there could have just been collateral damage. I imagine you only needed to sacrifice just some of them, just enough to feed your pets. Maybe they came back for supper later—"

She would commit murder. She would eat this woman's eyes. Tsunade was still talking and speculating on the death toll of her hometown, but she heard no more of it. Sakura stood up in one harsh, demonic jerk.

The gunmen startled, but not faster than she could rush forward and crush the celebrity's neck in both her hands. She shouted, "I will slit your fucking _throat_ if you don't shut up you brainless gabby cunt! I am not a murderer! I am not a murderer! I ran away and I'll never, ever forget about it! Fuck you!"

The guns were all around her. Four of the five men had surrounded her but they were not close enough to touch her or Tsunade. Tsunade had lifted a hand to block the attack and only succeeded in having two fingers trapped under Sakura's grip. Sakura did not notice this; she saw only Tsunade's fine face with makeup and thick lashes and pretended it was Zabuza, who never stopped looking at her like she was a leper, or cursed.

She took in a quick breath: "How fucking dare you talk like you know anything about what I did! You could have done something if you shot those things while they was in the street but you didn't, because you would rather I stand there like live bait so you didn't have to! I didn't! Want! To be there! I saved Suigetsu from getting bitten in half, you should pay me! PAY ME! For saving your _lives!"_

"St-kkhop," Tsunade said from between Sakura's hands. Her eyes were huge. "What did the beast sa-haayy to you?"

"It said to not send more hunters after it, and that I owed it my life for _intervening_ in what happened to my town, and that, that it," she paused and the drop in immediate rage caused her fingers to loosen; Tsunade did not react. "It told me about people in my town who got away. People it saw. He described the mayor to me. And one of my friends. And it bid me to be its messenger if it ever wants to communicate with humans again."

For one breath there was no noise of her heavy breathing or her creaking, tight muscles, or any rustling of clothes or guns in human hands. It was. Quiet enough to burn gunpowder.

One lone sound grew softly out of the silence, increasing with deliberate slowness. One of the gunmen taking deep breaths. Then: "It seems…that the creature can communicate just fine," the man said. "Why does it want to employ you to communicate?"

"Because reasonable men would shoot it on sight, I imagine," she growled back. "Reasonable men _should_ have shot it on sight. I wonder. Why you didn't."

She turned heedlessly past two of the rifles that could have splattered her skull and brains and laid her eyes on the wielder of the third. He met her wide, green gaze and quivering lashes. She stood ready for carnage like the skullfaced beast. The man recognized this. He chose to make no movements.

"We feared a sudden retaliation," said the first man. Sakura flicked her eyes in his direction, stayed still otherwise. This one was Baki, who wore a white cloth over half of his face. The exposed half was controlled and cool, but sweat gathered on his brow and lip just like her. "You must know…we have never seen these beasts in daylight, either. I have never seen one without the aid of my night scope. I have never…I've never heard of such a thing. Anywhere."

"It is very shocking," Sakura rasped quietly.

Another beat of silence that they all feared would be broken by a frantic shot. It was broken by Sakura turning halfway around again, to where she still had Tsunade's throat clasped in her hands. The woman was breathing through her nose and had not bothered to remove her trapped hand from Sakura's grip, though she was able.

"You're the only one that did. Ma'am," she added as an afterthought, sounding empty. "I heard you cock your gun after the creatures started talking to me. You came out of the restaurant to aim at them."

"You said 'stay back, Ino.'" Tsunade spoke, and Sakura sighed, dropping her shoulders in despair.

"I wasn't thinking," she replied quickly. Her lips and eyes began to feel again. They quivered. "Please excuse me—" Aware now, she finally removed her hands from Tsunade Senju's throat. First she swept some sweat off of her face, then her wet hands retreated close to her chest to grasp onto her own shirt. The enormity of having attacked a woman began to settle upon her mind and her hives, till both began to sink flat.

"I don't remember much of what I was thinking. Through all of it," she said weakly; it came out as a whine. "Through Konoha, either. I just. Hoped I would live. Please don't think I'm evil, or a monster just because I…" Her fingers were closer to her neck now. The skin was cool now. "I would do anything to get rid of it."

Another pause, wherein they waited patiently.

"I never thought I would see that creature again. It actually asked me if _I_ was the one following _it_ —" There was a pause in her speech as she fought a reflexive gag. The idea that it had a gender, something recognizable to her, was hideous to think of. "Him, not it. His name is…is Madara."

While some of the men whispered around her, and one of them backed away entirely, Sakura was pulled into the past, an entire day ago, to the dirt path and the wilds and that river from which the skullfaced beast had looked across at her. Before that, when her deer had stopped on the road and looked behind, and she had feared that Hidan would be there, had it sensed the beast? Had Madara been there in the empty wilderness, watching her even then?

Had he _chased_ her for hours and gotten to the river at the same time as her? Or had it been a different beast entirely that the deer sensed on the road, a third member of that demon clan, and she had run for hours and run into Madara who happened to be at that river, and then run for hours again and then Madara and that bird beast showed up in this town, less than a day after she'd fled them or stopped?

"Great God," one of the men said at these possibilities, for she was speaking them all aloud.

Sakura helplessly looked up at him and looked for disbelief on his face, like hers, like how she felt, but she looked up and couldn't find him. They were all blurred, all awash with her tears. They all became the same.

She said to these blurs, "Please. Don't point those at me," and a second gun retreated and pointed its jaws away from her. "I am just. Trying. To find my friend. I am. Going to fucking explode."

There was no explosion but a soft crumpling that made one of the gunmen avert his eyes at her shame. Her hands came up to cover her face but they weren't strong enough to stay there. She gripped her own hair, arms slightly swinging. Her stomach swung, too, considering making her retch.

When a hand touched her shoulder and pushed against her movement to steady her, she said like a toy doll, "Please do not touch me." And the hand slipped softly away.

"I'm sorry," one of the men said.

"Me as well," said a second, brusquely.

"I believe you." This last was Tsunade, whose voice brought Sakura's gaze to her. She watched the girl half-heartedly comb through her waves of pink hair with one hand.

Tsunade did not speak like a woman who'd been subdued and choked a few minutes prior. Her stance was strong and Sakura wanted to continue looking at her, that she might be filled with a similar strength herself. "I applaud what you've done to get here. And what you just did outside. Thank you, Sakura, for your help."

She nearly said "thank you" right back and offered Tsunade and the men tea again. But her mind caught another mark of hospitality and service that had been missed: her chicken and rice meal back in the restaurant must be awfully cold by now.

That idea stuck just then: it was something that was waiting for her, the only thing that was waiting for her in the world. With that, she could stand still.

"You're…welcome," she managed after a few more moments. And then, "But I will remember you trying to rile me up with those accusations."

Tsunade stared stonily back. Sakura felt as though she held her steel bat, which had been useless to her for so long. She pretended like she was eating that savory chicken and rice while swinging her bat at a person's face. At those _sluts_ in Calstoa who had insulted her for nothing, and at Tsunade who had accused her and held her at gunpoint for nothing. She liked that strong, bitter taste the thought brought on.

"I believe that's what you were doing, anyway," Sakura kept on. "Saying like, they were my pets, and I left my family and friends, like I'm the cruelest cunt alive. To see if it would get me angry or scared enough to admit I did it. Even if you it was something you thought of in the moment. Or if you really thought it was a good idea or would turn out well. I won't forget that."

The silence in the room weighed heaviest on Tsunade, but one of her men spoke up at her side.

"It—it was necessary," said that one, who looked like relative of Suigetsu. He had the same jagged white hair and pointed teeth that flashed when he talked and stuttered. "I'm so sorry, miss Sakura. But—but as Baki said—"

"There's never been a thing like this," said Baki, from next to him. His body and the cloth over his face and his gun all looked so still as to be inanimate. "I can't imagine what it was like, living through what you did. For us, it was the first time, and we had no idea what they might do. If they can stand in natural light, lord knows if they might breathe fire or float in midair. Our priority was self-defense against whatever they might do."

"They're giant animals, not magic. As…far as I know." Sakura's dismissive scoff soured by the end of her words. The creatures came into existence only in the blanket of shadow made high in the reaches of space, between their earth and the moon. These blanket shadows occurred a few times a month, everywhere and forever. Outside of that shadow, their blood and bones were erased. What field of science had names and equations for unnatural light and shadows was beyond Sakura Haruno, and most men.

These men did not speak up after her to declare what they knew of the topic, and Sakura, a grown woman and a child, did not care to probe further. She wanted a pleasant meal that this nightmare had denied her and nothing else.

"Can I go back to the restaurant, please?" she asked into the men's pained silence around her. "They were saving a meal for me. I feel exhausted. Hope you understand."

One of the gunmen jolted forward. He looked near to her age, wearing bulky, ill-fitting clothes and a faceplate that hid his ears and forehead. His gun hung on a strap that crossed over one shoulder, and now he'd turned it entirely around so it hung on his back, out of her sight as he could manage.

"Please let me take you there," he offered. "I'd like to pay for your meal. Not that it does much for what you've just…I would just like to. If you're all right with it. I'm Zaku. Rifle lineman."

' _You were gonna kill me, Zaku.'_

The thought appeared in her mind and quickly died there. She didn't care. She didn't care about these gunmen or Tsunade's cruel words or Madara the living nightmare. Only food, only sustenance and progress, to balm her. She turned around to leave the room without saying anything to anyone else.

Zaku followed her. No one else did.

* * *

Discussion moved quietly around her when she moved about the town that day. Eyes were on her and rapidly flicking to and fro when she went down the dirt road to the restaurant with Zaku. Her chicken and rice meal was remade from scratch and Zaku paid for them both. Restaurant patrons stared.

When Sakura asked after Suigetsu, and how soon he might recover—and what he'd been doing in the vicinity of Madara and his clan—Zaku had no answers but promised to send word to her once he knew. As they talked, an older man stopped by one of the front windows, looking in at them.

After the meal and after she told Zaku she was returning to Mr. Vero's, she saw men on the opposite side of the street staring at her. Two of them were armed. She turned her back to them and tuned out their hissing murmurs.

She gave none of it comment or attention and instead pretended to wear blinders like a draft horse pulling a carriage. Like a trained horse she lumbered back Mr. Vero's barn, were her stag and all of her possessions had sat uselessly during the day's events. When she asked to be lodged for another night, he agreed and gave her money back to her.

At night, she lay with a blanket and pillow in the barn again, between her nameless stag and two geldings. She did not eat dinner or read her books. She slept through suppertime and all the night and woke late in the morning. The geldings and the stag were all out to pasture by the time her eyes were open.

She watched how her breath and roving fingers gently moved the sticks of hay closest to her eyes.

' _My head hurts.'_ She thought. She drank from a water skin and it almost dropped out of her hands. _'Everything hurts. Mom. Can you bring me soup? Please? Chicken soup, please. No, vegetable soup.'_

Birds flitted past a nearby window. They chirped and chirped.

An hour passed before she had another thought.

' _I've told the story three times now,'_ she mused, pushing a piece of straw under her blanket. _'I think…I think this was the worst time of all of them.'_ The memory was fresh and hot when she touched it and she pressed hands onto her face when she did: she had cried while she told them what happened, unlike her previous times with Zabuza and then Suigetsu.

She had meandered and stuttered. She had not been concise. These men with guns would always remember her sobbing and they'd tell other people that she'd been sobbing. Had they even understood everything she said? What if she was just crying and barely talking and they didn't know what the hell she said?

' _It's never easier!'_ she shouted at herself. _'I still even forget bits sometimes. It's never easier. Never is. Just keeps going, going. As long as I'm going, it's going.'_

She stayed in that spot a while longer, even after the birds were gone. Nothing was waiting for her. Except this.

Sakura rose up in slow shifts: arm under torso, torso pushing up, legs pulling underneath her. Pausing whenever she felt like it. She weakly pulled at her sleeping clothes till they were off of her body. Still sitting, she washed with a basin and soap Mr. Vero had left last night and sat longer while the air dried her body. There was a wide scar near the top of her breast, from god knows what. Maybe from falling out of that tree a few days back. But she didn't want to think about that, or her mom, just soup. She wanted soup, nice and hot, even if it was already nice and hot outside.

She went to the restaurant again, thinking about buying new summer sandals. Two doors down from the restaurant was a metals shop that doubled as a home for the owner. _Haretta Smith and Metal,_ read the sign placed crookedly on the siding, and that was the first time Sakura knew the name of the town where this had all happened. The metalworker and his wife were visible through the window, and once they noticed her, they watched her move till she was not visible herself anymore.

Sakura stepped from the bare ground up the few little steps to the restaurant at the pace of an aged grandmother. She asked for vegetable soup and a plate of crackers, then sat in a booth near a corner of the building with as wide a view of the place as there was to be had.

The owner brought her meal within ten minutes and also set a scoop of vanilla ice cream next to it. It had a spray of fudge and nuts on top. _'Is it my birthday? Last meal before I die?'_ she thought, but only looked blank-eyed up at the man. From outside of her buzzing ears, she heard him say that she needn't pay for her meal.

The owner had a sharp, businesslike face. She instinctively sat to attention when his gaze was on her as though she would be graded for it. But her movements were still sluggish. "That's not…not necessary, sir," she managed, but he held up his hand and she acquiesced into silence immediately.

"It is. It absolutely is," he said with quiet surety. "For what you did yesterday—never ask me again about meals. Or shelter, if you need it. I'll set you up a mattress in my kitchen if nothing else."

Sakura breathed. A tiny wave of cold air was wafting up from the ice cream in front of her. "Does everyone in town know by now?" she asked.

"I'd think so. If anyone doesn't, they will by the end of today. We're only a few hundred here. And Haretta homes were all built close by each other." He waited, arms behind his back, believing there would be more he could do or say for her benefit.

"Not everyone who knows what happened will be wanting to offer me free meals," Sakura observed aloud, breathing the stream of cold air. "I thought you were the owner? Or did one of the gunmen pay you to give me free food? I don't think people who saw what happened, or hear about it, are gonna want to give me free food."

"I own Haretta Grilling House and I wasn't paid to treat you well," he said in a voice that made Sakura's spine straighten further. "I thank and commend you for your handling of those beasts and always will. I know the squadron is planning to disseminate the story themselves as they move out of town for other jobs. Control the information, much as they can. And I can't speak for every man who wisely fears a dark animal, but not many folk round the whole continent will doubt a militiaman's word."

"We said 'gunmen' in Konoha," Sakura added.

"Ah, us, too. I think people my age say 'militiamen' more. It's—" He interrupted himself by jolting a few steps backward, making space in front of Sakura's tiny booth. Tsunade appeared from behind him. She stopped beside the leather seat opposite Sakura, in the perfect position to seat herself there. But she didn't.

"Care for a guest?" she asked. Today she wore a dark green blouse with wide sleeves and orange-red lipstick that shone. There were no dark marks visible around her throat where Sakura had choked her.

"You can sit," Sakura said carefully.

While Tsunade moved cautiously into the booth, the restaurant owner ran swiftly away and came back with a wine bottle, glass, and plate of capers for Tsunade. These were arranged in a tight circle around her, as Sakura's various dishes and water glass took up most of the available space on the little table. He left them alone without another word.

For a short while the soup spoon tapping against the warm soup bowl was the only sound between them. Sakura crunched up two crackers over the bowl and dropped them out of her palm. She chewed the bits in her soup before swallowing.

"I'm sorry for yesterday," Tsunade said lowly. The makeup still looked seamless from this close up. It was her expression that bore uncomfortable cracks, much more than when she had been actually choked. "For what I said to you. The whole interrogation, you being left to stand in front of the creatures. All of it. I stand by that it was necessary, but I'm sorry it had to hurt and endanger you."

"Me, too," Sakura said with a pop of her lips over the spoon. There was room in her belly for warm soup, but not for bitter apologies, or bitterness in general. Not anymore. "And you don't need to bring it up again. It's done. I have to get a move on soon and it doesn't help me to be thinking about guns in my face, or any of the rest of it."

Before she had even taken the next spoonful, Tsunade spoke. "Where are you going after this?"

"Forward," Sakura said. She picked up another cracker.

"What direction? What place?"

"I've been going north almost since I started this and I'm going to keep going that way for a while more before I turn east and go inland. East, or maybe southeast, actually. I'll hit the mountains and it'll be lonelier country that way, but more towns once I'm past them and hit the big rivers." She was careful to eat only between sentences and not between words.

"May I accompany you on your way? At least for a while."

Broth dribbled off the spoon. "Ex—I mean, excuse me? Why would you want to do that? I thought you were…" She forgot what the hell Tsunade Senju was doing two days' travel away from her place of employment. "On a…vacation?"

"Sabbatical, technically," Tsunade grinned. She reached for her wine bottle; the label had a picture of a full moon with craters etched onto it in detail.

She poured. "Every other year I'm a traveling diagnostic circus. One year in Tidusa, gainfully employed, receiving patients locally and those who travel from far off to see me. Sometimes I'll winter in the east and do the same there. And if it's an off-year, I may come to them, like this year. Always a summer-to-summer affair. I follow a general route and schedule, but there is flexibility." She plucked some of the capers with a careful pinch, then poured a second glass of wine. It smelled of chocolate and oak.

There were tiny liquid sloshes and glass _tink_ noises from Tsunade's portion of the little table, and silence from Sakura's. That Tsunade Senju would offer such a strange gift had never entered her mind, even in her occasional lucid moments these last twenty-four hours. Keeping this one lucid and herself present was a struggle.

Tsunade was pouring into a second glass that had appeared seemingly out of the air. "How would you feel about that?"

When she pushed the second over to Sakura, it too stayed silent and untouched. "I'm not sure. Ma'am," she said, mostly stalling. Her fingers were tight on the table and around the spoon. "I haven't had someone with me, so I f-feel, it'd be…um…"

It would feel strange, to have someone else around. It would be harder to have conversations with herself, probably. Would it feel safer? Would it feel comfortable? Would a famous person want anything to do with her, having felt Sakura's hands choking her and humiliating her in front of other people?

How did she feel about her? How did shefeel right now?

"I feel really fucked in the head," Sakura said quietly. Tsunade's honey-colored eyes kept her unblinkingly within their gaze. "It's been a year and a half. Of this. This traveling and all. I like seeing different towns and people. I mean sometimes I do. Sometimes I feel like…like I'm not actually moving. Like there are times where I can't, um…"

She averted her eyes to the ice cream, standing in the bowl with streaks of melt down the sides like white lava. She gave a half-hearted smile and decided to busy herself with the dessert and do nothing else at the moment.

Tsunade moved her hands slightly, then took in an audible breath, so her speaking would not be sudden: "Sakura. I know parts of that travel were terrible for you. You never got to recover from what happened to you."

"I have things I can do," Sakura said back skittishly. She did not think before saying those words.

"You have post-traumatic stress disorder, is what you have," Tsunade said, fingers loose around her glass. She met Sakura's stupid, rapid blinks. "What you've done to survive on your own up to this point is incredible. I think you're an incredibly strong person. I want to do something to help you so you can continue being strong. I can give you support, and knowledge, and someone to talk to and be with you for a while. That is in my power to give. If you want me. But after yesterday, I understand if you don't."

Her hands were placed on the table one on top of the other, shoulders back, gaze sharp. She postured as though for an interview, reminding Sakura of her own limp, unpleasant interview in Yuraka. There were no limp or unpleasant feelings now, but nor did she know the proper name of what she was feeling. It was something like warmth, which oughtn't be there after mouthfuls of cold ice cream.

"I think I would like to have you," she decided. "But based on how I've traveled in the past, I'm still not convinced that your flexible schedule and mine would exactly…work together. People will need you in towns for days or weeks at a time, I imagine. Sometimes I move on after just one day. Even if you wanted me to, there's no way I'd stay with you for your whole year. Nowhere close. Even if I tried, my path could diverge from yours any day, regardless."

"I understand and still believe I can accommodate you. If it turns out I'm wrong, I hope we can separate amicably."

Amicably, she said. Sakura had to grip the table tightly before grinding out, "I _mean_ we might separate because Madara wants it. He said he wanted to meet me again and use me as a messenger again. I have no idea where or when he might appear, or what he'll want me to do. Or," she paused, making a helpless, laugh-like noise, "or what people around me will think, if they see me talking to him. Maybe I'll be killed by a mob. Or shot in the street."

That idea and memory lay between them for a while. It made them both loathe to touch their food or to move at all.

"That is part of the reason I'd like to stay with you," Tsunade admitted after a few moments. "What happened yesterday, it will certainly spread. It might be in papers faster than we can travel, but I'd like to be around to control the message if I can. I've talked down riled-up crowds before. And there are still a couple men of power out there who know of me. I can talk to them if I must. And I can talk to you, whenever you need."

' _But I only talk to strangers,'_ she thought, remembering so many of the faces she had talked to in the last year or more. Zabuza, who recoiled from her, sweet and accommodating Shizune, even Omoi whom she kissed and lusted for, were strangers, and not people she truly wanted.

"I haven't encountered someone who was this generous to me for no reason for a very long time," Sakura said flatly. "You're… I mean, you're some stranger. Who I've seen in books and newspapers. I just can't believe that you're in front of me and you give a shit. I'm not sure I actually do."

"Then believe me with time," Tsunade replied. "If we do this, we do it on your terms. If you decide you want to be rid of me, I request that you say goodbye and don't just disappear in the night. And accept a biweekly wage as long as we're together. Since you said we should pay you for what you did."

It was all ridiculous, this nightmare, this strangulation of her life by Madara and by the It-Men and even herself. She had strangled Tsunade Senju yesterday.

"Okay," she said to this numberless offer. That brief answer allowed her to quickly get back to her dinner and dessert. Warm soup and cracker crumbs, cold ice cream and chocolate drizzles. Nuts in the ice cream mixed with the crumbs and crunched and crunched and crunched. She was warm and cold inside.

Tsunade sipped at her wine and refilled her glass with slow, quiet pouring.

Later in the evening, someone appeared by the table. It was Ao, one of the men who had been at her interrogation. The first man to apologize and the first one to have pressed the barrel of his gun into her face yesterday afternoon. One eye was covered by a leather patch worn around his head and the other had difficulty meeting the women's gaze.

He held up a slimmer bottle of wine than Tsunade's moon-marked bottle. He pointedly faced Sakura instead of her. The gratitude was so heavy on his face that Sakura became still with awe, intensely aware that it was for her.

Ao tried to smile at them. "May I join you both?" he asked. Tsunade remained quiet. She deferred to Sakura, who reveled in a soft bloom of surprise and a thankfulness of her own.

She invited him to bring forth a chair and talk.

* * *

They left Haretta next morning, Sakura on her nameless stag and Tsunade on a chestnut draft horse with four saddlebags to Sakura's two. Mr. Vero waved goodbye and then took long steps to back away from her.

They walked down the same hill that Madara and the catbird had walked upon when they left town. From this slope at the edge of Haretta proper, the view was open and flat, showing square, tilled fields, cows and patches of woodland for miles beyond. Skullface could be crouching in any one of them. Sakura sought to distract herself immediately.

"I'd like to head north to Mineta. I read in Tidusa there are some isolated farms between there and here, local exporters. But that's the nearest place with a doctor who has his own office, so at least it's not a total nothing-town. But I will stop by at least some of the isolated homes and…solicit there."

She glanced up once, meeting Tsunade's eyes for any potential argument but finding none. Sakura took out a tiny, round candy wrapped in wax paper, from a little gift bag received from Ao the previous night. She unwrapped it partially and used the edges of the paper to push the candy into her mouth without getting sticky fingers.

"I've no scheduled meetings till Arinsk. Almost a hundred miles north of that, and not far from a beach."

Tsunade was obliged to say that she had packed some medical supplies but would have to buy plenty on her way, but her own supply would do for a man with chronic pain in his neck and spine, and Sakura expressed confusion and distaste that he'd been given nothing but magnesium for it, and asked questions about inflammation and fibromyalgia, and the day passed.

They unpacked their steeds at a site a hundred paces from the road, not visible from there thanks to being screened by a low hill and some oak trees. She wasn't worried about shelter, as she'd packed a tent big enough for two, with double-canvas thickness. They worked together to set it up and arrange their blankets, then tied their steeds to a nail in the ground. The hoofed beasts grazed and the women ate smoked jerky and dried strips of mango which Tsunade chewed meditatively upon like a cow.

When they finally lay together in the cozy space of the tent, she was the one to fall asleep first. Sakura could not. She lay awake a long time in quiet awe.

The sound of another person sleeping next to her was alien and beautiful. She watched Tsunade Senju's sleeping face and the slow rise and fall of her sides under her silk sleeping clothes and how her poor breasts were crowded by her arm going over her side. She did not disappear when Sakura blinked, or squeezed her eyes to forcefully wake herself up from any dreams she might be having.

Once, the woman sighed and rolled onto her back, moving slightly away. Sakura found that she drew slightly closer as though pulled by a desperate magnetism. This, too, alien. How long since she saw a person and wanted to draw close? It was Omoi, wasn't it. She missed him again in that moment, she missed his warm kiss and she missed the pleasure from her fantasy of him rescuing her and wanting her, but it didn't really hurt.

It didn't hurt.

She sunk into the little pillow and sighed.

* * *

"All right. I'm really sorry for taking up your time! But I had to ask. I'll let you get back to your work."

"Thanks for _letting_ me," the woman growled back, and shut the door. The sound of the loom by the door quickly stirred up again. It smothered the clacking of Sakura's steps as she rounded off the porch. Tsunade and her horse and the stag all watched her come downhill from the house.

"She didn't know anything," Sakura all but chirped as she flipped through one of her two saddlebags. She fetched an asparagus shaft for the stag to chew.

The woman had hosted a deliveryman taking some goods to Tidusa recently, but nothing more. The arrangement of never leaving the house while her husband and mother did all necessary traveling and shopping struck Sakura as strange, but she cared not to relay any more of this failed conversation to Tsunade. It was late in the day, her period had started and made her feel hotter and quicker to begin sweating, and each of the four isolated homes they'd come across so far had seemed more useless than the last. At least the first homeowner had offered her some water.

"We can make it to Mineta before midnight if we keep going. Or make camp again in an hour or so and get there the next morning," Tsunade said. Sakura felt tempted to argue with this fact for no reason at all.

"I'd rather ride on and get there late. I want a bed, my back hurts," she said fussily. It hurt much less after an anti-inflammatory pill from Tsunade. It was mostly her attitude that hurt. And something else had started bothering her, after hearing Tsunade affectionally scratch and rub at her gelding, Rex, all the time. "And I need to name my stag already."

She described to Tsunade that he could have been Hammer, or Arrow, because when he wanted to speed along, his hooves hit the ground like hammers and he could shoot forward like an arrow. She did not describe again that she'd had these thoughts while fleeing the sight of Skullface and his companion at the river. Tsunade had heard this before, after the interrogation at the courthouse, when they sat down together for a long time before their free dinner, but she did not mention the repetition.

Tsunade put forth Ragna and Magnus, names for strong warriors or a lumberjack, suitable for her muscular steed. Sakura put forth Bruno, because it was ugly and she felt ugly. It was a name Ino would have relentlessly, cruelly mocked.

At the end of the conversation, no name was decided and no other topics broached. They rode in silence up hills and down hills and past a night mailman on a donkey and into the quiet borders of Mineta. Only the inn and glassmakers' home still had lights on.

The inn had a little neighbor building that was being used as a stable, and so both riders and the ridden were able to be housed indoors after three days in the outdoors. Tsunade purchased them a room with two beds, which Sakura had not expected. She was also permitted to shower first, and choose which bed she preferred. She chose the one closer to the door and further from the window. By the time Tsunade had rinsed off as well, Sakura's vague anger she'd held onto all day had gone limp and quiet.

"Feeling better?" Tsunade asked as she passed the bed.

"Yes," she said in a sort of limp moan.

"What else are you feeling?" Tsunade asked, and Sakura frowned at how she was feeling petty and angry and hadn't been until Tsunade had started talking. For a moment she mulled over the choice of giving this woman an upstanding answer that would suit a professional mentor, and snapping back that she didn't appreciate being talked to like she was in therapy.

"I feel the usual amount of 'shitty' that I feel when no one around me is being useful," she chose to say, and it came out in a growl without her meaning to. "I should be used to no one knowing what I'm talking about when I say 'refugees' or 'my townsfolk from a million miles from here' or anything like that. Sometimes they're apologetic. Sometimes they act like I'm personally trampling on their property just asking them a damn question. _I_ don't treat strangers like that."

"Hell of an exercise in patience," Tsunade remarked, tying her hair back.

"It is."

"I think you're approaching it is admirable," she said. "You've got a real knack for chatting people up and being sociable even when the other person is blatantly not reciprocating. Maybe it's practiced, maybe it's your natural mannerisms, but it's a real boon to you when facing down so many useless jackasses." Sakura kept quiet even though she sensed she was being told _good job_ somewhere in this meandering observation. Next, Tsunade added, "Though I was surprised you never asked for my help for the difficult folk. Even some backwoods idiots know my name on occasion."

Sakura frowned, almost glared. "Why? I've done this alone for a long time," she very nearly snapped. "I'm not always gonna have you to cling to any time I come across a backwoods idiot, of which I've already met dozens and dozens, by the way."

Tsunade Senju met her glare and did not look fazed by it. And after a few seconds of that silence, Sakura began to feel guilty for it. "I'm gonna stay up reading for a bit. If you wake up first, feel free to do what you need to in town. I'll be seeing a colleague at the carpenter's place whenever I wake up. We'll meet up whenever."

"Thank you. Sorry," Sakura murmured, and turned over.

Hotter even than her uncomfortable body and back pain was an unflattering red blush upon her cheeks, evidence of not just guilt but of shame. She may well be a backwoods fucking idiot herself for sniping at the one person who had helped her the most in her troubles. Her ex-boss. Or boss's boss. Did Tsunade see her as a woman grown, or a child? _(Girly?)_ Which one did she care to help? Maybe she would regret it. Maybe Sakura would be fired from this "job", instead of quitting.

Tsunade did not say anything else to her, only flicked on the lone electric lamp in the room and tapped her fingers on a hardcover book. Sakura fingered the edges of her blanket and listened to the rustling of those pages until she wasn't awake anymore, and when she was, it was not quite eight in the morning, and Tsunade was snoring. She dressed quietly and did as Tsunade had bid her to do. Or politely offered her the chance to do. The town proper only boasted three streets and the courthouse wasn't hard to find at one of the two existing intersections.

Sakura introduced herself kindly to the receptionist, who wore sleek green slacks and glimmering hoop earrings and looked admiringly on Sakura's fine pink blouse she'd purchased in Tidusa. She explained that she did not have any legal hearings or complaints, but wished to know if Mineta had hosted anyone from the village of Konoha, three hundred and some miles to the south. Given rooms in a local's home? Talked about in the restaurant or tavern? It might be that the grocer had complained of strangers asking for strange supplies, even!

The woman's smile stayed in place as she asked, "Are you sure it's Konoha and not Kumo-ha?"

There was something like a hot blush growing on Sakura's face. In confusion, she ignored it. "No, definitely Konoha, but, but the neighboring town to it was called _Kumo._ Do you know someone from Kumo?"

"Well, my daughter is a cook at the Enni-ya, and _she_ sees travelers all the time, and she served a raspberry pie to two men from somewhere called Kumo. They said it was one of the best they'd ever had, better than their own mothers'!"

' _Oh. Okay.'_ Sakura thought while she did not breathe.

"Now, that's interesting! I used to visit Kumo when I was younger, my mother would take me shopping there. I definitely know the place. What else did she say about those men? When did she see them?"

The woman's smile faltered, and she tapped her long, painted nails on a piece of paper. "I believe…two months ago? About? Not much summer crop growth yet. She said they were good customers. Had loads to say about her baking. Why, do you know who they were?"

It had been a good while since someone asked Sakura why she was asking her questions in the first place. Her answer was only slightly fumbled, slightly made-up: "I'm not sure, actually, just based on how nice they were! A lot of folk from Konoha and Kumo left since both cities burned down. On the same day, even. Just awful! People packed up what they could and left, so when I travel, I'm always looking for people I could recognize. I haven't seen someone from my hometown in so long, I feel like I'd buy them dinner on the spot if I saw them."

The woman recognized the sentimental glint in Sakura's eyes and responded in kind. Soon she had bountiful, unnecessary details about Amy, whom Sakura promised to ask for when she visited the Enni-ya herself tonight. There was sweat in her underarms when she finally excused herself, and she pushed on a pull-to-open door, and then she was outside, in a town where _men from Kumo_ had been walking around. Two months ago. When she'd been working in Tidusa.

' _Focus focus focus you idiot BITCH focus!'_ she shouted in her mind, and screamed into her own closed mouth. No one heard.

Men from Kumo. She hadn't thought about Kumo in a long time. Even though that place was destroyed, too.

The woman in Emmha who told her to get the fuck away from her butchery stand had said that Kumo had been attacked even before Konoha had. This she'd heard from Iwa residents, all of whom voted to leave the area. She'd never given a thought to Kumo's people after that, or Iwa's, even though all of them were displaced. Even though people from Kumo were also out there, wandering the world, able to smile and eat pie.

When she tried to picture them, she only pictured Konoha people that she remembered. Her mind was a sift that only accepted thoughts to do with Konoha. All others were…irrelevant. Dead. Konoha wasn't dead, though. Perhaps the Enni-ya visitors were from Konoha in the first place, and that overweight, overdressed mother with her cushy courthouse desk job simply hadn't heard the name right. Sakura asked her questions to a few more locals, but got no clear answers and did not care much.

She ended up at the Enni-ya anyway. It was a building attached to the inn she stayed in. A pair of double-doors in the lobby led into it, which she had ignored the previous night in her emotional fog.

Her server was a chubby blonde woman who introduced herself as Amy. She preened at the praise for her raspberry pie. She had no more details on the Kumo men than her mother did, but she was no idiot, Sakura felt. She felt so when Amy leaned in and chuckled with her and told her bits of useless, funny gossip and said, _Mr. Fern's training his apprentice to chop timber for housing but I can hear the timber saw screeching from here and it sounds like one hundred cows dying and the you know only thing he's training is MY PATIENCE!_

She felt like Ino. She was Ino with a hundred extra pounds on her bones and traces of Ino's clever bite in her bubbly speech. Sakura watched her walk away with the dreamlike smile of a drunk man.

' _Miss you.'_

' _You, too.'_

She had finished half the little pie and come back to self-awareness for the most part when Tsunade appeared and dropped into the side of the booth opposite her.

"Hey. You all right with staying another day?" she said brusquely.

She ignored the spare menu in front of her and Sakura ignored her question. Instead, she detailed the conversation about the men from Kumo. Her own neighbors. Here in this place eating pie. Smiling and alive. Her trail of evidence was growing longer, rather than growing cold, thanks to Amy.

"Damn," Tsunade said at the end of it all. "I'm glad to hear it. So given that, are you willing to stay tomorrow or no?"

Sakura was floating on a cloud of sugar and hope she hadn't touched for a long time. She chewed the pie too quickly and bit her tongue.

" _God!_ " she coughed. She slapped a cloth napkin over her mouth but she was laughing. "Another day can't hurt if they've been gone for weeks already. Who did you see today?" Tsunade smiled and distracted her. She told a pleasant story of an old colleague who treated famous athletes before retiring here. The Sunset Race would be in Fukimi this year and one of the runners was on Tsunade's patient list, scheduled for October.

She ordered them both drinks when there were only crumbs of the pie left. Her request for a type of rum was clear, but when the glass was set in front of Sakura, she hardly knew what to do with it.

"Your drinks are on me till your first paycheck," Tsunade said, rapping her knuckles on the table. "That's gold rum, tastes a bit like vanilla. And not too much alcohol."

"So I can have it?" Sakura asked dumbly, licking fruit filling at the edge of her lip.

"Sure can," Tsunade replied, sipping her own larger glass. "Drink as much or as little of it as you want. It's been a good day today, and I want it to end good for you as well. This won't make you drunk, so we'll start tomorrow strong, you and me."

 _You and me_ settled in the air like sugar in the mouth. It made her giggle, and touch her hand to her mouth, and even blush. She welcomed the blush and didn't try to hide it.

The was not exactly vanilla, but she still finished it. Tsunade purchased and finished half a bottle of something eastern, with a hare's head on the bottle, before they eventually lumbered back up to their room. Sakura reached between their beds when Tsunade was snoring and snuck a gulp of the hare's head alcohol. It was thick, almost a syrup, and tasted sweet first and bitter a moment later.

She placed it gently back in its exact position from before and burrowed under her sheets like a hare, very warm.

* * *

Sakura was a nurse again and she traveled north up the western continental coast with Tsunade Senju, a medical doctor ever in demand.

Even before they arrived at her first patient in Arinsk, Tsunade would stop at local clinics, and the proprietor knew her name as often as not. She would offer to insert herself into his cases for the day, or consult with him. She learned new cases and phenomena if nothing else, and Sakura learned everything she did. Her services were pro bono, or cheap, or bought by expensive alcohol, depending on the day.

In the summer, Tsunade had a dozen patients across this coastal region to see, which suited their mutual agreement just enough. Sakura planned to keep going north for a while yet, perhaps till she judged a Konoha native would begin to hate how early the fall chill came in this far north, or until a lack of clues began to drag her down.

In the summer, she learned of colitis, tremors, nerve pain, parasites, sudden blindness, tumors, ichthyosis, diabetes, diseases of the blood, medicines made from plants and minerals from the ground. She learned where the five pill factories on the continent were and shipping routes for barges or loads or traincars of the most and least expensive medicines. She learned the names of medical journals and found one in a bookshop once. She learned common lies told by idiots.

"That is not what whooping cough is, you goddamn fool. Get out," Tsunade said once, and kicked the chair a piteous woman sat curled up on. She uncurled herself, stopped making _whoooop_ noises and spat on the ground when she left.

It meant little to Sakura, who had seen all kinds of strangers. They sampled fruity drinks that evening and went to the local post office to see if any telegrams had been left for them. There was indeed one, sent by Ao, from Tidusa, who only said, _My best wishes to Miss Sakura, I hope you are well._

Tsunade was already drunk there in the post office and began heckling Sakura about the attentions and benefits of older men. Sakura listened in the post office and on the streets and while they attempted to set up their tents outside of town. Tsunade kept stumbling; Sakura's stag kept a watchful eye on her while Rex seemed intent on not even looking in her direction.

She fell straight down, collapsing onto one calf. "I need to—re-train myself how to walk, holy shit—Sakura, don't you ever get drunk, okay, don't do it," she said with a burp. "And Sakura can you, uh, train my legs. To walk."

Sakura rose up off her knees and said, "Lady Tsunade, the only thing you're training is MY PATIENCE!" and both of them fell back laughing.

They kept traveling. To the coast and away from it again.

To Arinsk, a town marked by a large population and a steel mill that employed that population.

To Farrah City, with a population of thirty-six and sixteen of them were in a community band. To more and more towns and villages of strangers.

They were in a village called Burelia, where a dark time occurred after three in the afternoon. They helped the post office clerk light lanterns outside the front door and sat quietly inside the building, heard nothing for all eight minutes that it lasted, and then went their separate ways for the day.

Sakura passed by a hunting goods shop, pet a red deer doe tied up by a salon, and traipsed through the village's five streets. At the end of this last street, she found two more strangers to talk to. They were two men in dirt-smeared clothes with heavy boots and walking as though a long day's physical labor was now behind them. Discussion of a railroad beginning construction soon floated from their direction.

Sakura smiled when she approached them, not from practice but from appreciation. Both had handsome faces, one clean-shaven and one with a trim, dark beard and their casual posture attracted her. It pulled her like she was pulled to Kiba or Omoi.

They faced her when she stopped before them and introduced herself as a traveling nurse who had a question about this place, if you two have a spare minute.

"Yuh-huh, what question?" asked the clean-shaven one, while his friend eyed her with interest.

"Do you know of a town called Konoha?" She spoke playfully, making her hair bounce, making sure the men would pay attention to her. "It's far, far south of here, and it all burned down over a year ago. I was wondering if you've heard of anybody passing through who was from there? It's where I'm from, actually, and I'm always looking to see anybody from my hometown is out wandering the world."

"Was that you in Haretta?" the taller one asked, while the other said, overlapping him, "Konoha's the place where all the townspeople were eaten."

Sakura was instantly poisoned.

"I, I was?" she answered stupidly; it did not directly address either of their remarks, and she did not address herself.

The flirtatious smile and posture were melting away, her toes curling tight. Her body clenched up and forgot her.

Sakura's mind briefly divorced from her body. She saw two fields of vision at once: the two men standing in front of her, alone and lit by sunlight, and in between herself and them like a dividing wall was another vision that was Mr. Hayate's house in Konoha. The sounds of its crushing and falling were amplified to a louder, more painful volume that they had been when she'd seen the house fall and be eaten in real life. That sound of wood crashing and beams breaking, dust and possessions within spewing—all this overlaid onto the men, painting their clothes and faces with dust and wood and that massive creature's mouth.

The realization was consuming all her faculties and strength, the very idea— _they've heard about me._

"That was you. That pink hair. Shit."

"I—I didn't do it. I didn't mean to do it. I'm sorry," she said in a harsh, squeaky voice, which morphed into an ugly and accusatory bark in the next breath: "Listen to me, I didn't want to do it! I was trapped in the street alone with those things, I didn't want to speak to them! I didn't summon them, I'm not a witch, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" She coughed aloud to expel a cough and a sob tied together, but both came out as a gagging sound.

The men were doing nothing but watching with wide-eyed fascination and disgust, unable to look away from her much as she was unable to stop her body's physical rejection of what was happening. Like she was some—circus cunt.

Sakura used her left foot to step on the right, pressing hard on her own toes to flatten their curled-up shapes back to their regular pose. Her hands were steady and tight as they grasped her pink blouse and pressed wrinkles into it.

She begged: "Please say something."

They didn't.

"Please don't hurt me," she requested, and then her throat closed up.

The man on the right took a step backwards from her.

Noise came from the other one: "That really happened. You really talked to one. It talked." His mouth kept moving for a bit after his words finished, like there were others that never made it out of his mouth.

"How did you do it?" asked the other.

Sakura jerked forward like she had when she choked Tsunade. "Did you hear me at all, I just said I didn't do it! It's nothing that _I_ did! It just knows how to talk and it talked to me because I was there. It could have been anyone. I was just there."

"How can they come out when the sun isn't covered? There was really no eclipse?"

"I don't know how," she whined back at them. One of her hands was grabbing at the other wrist for support. Being able to grab made her voice one notch steadier. "It was like that in Konoha, too. They came in the mah, mor—the morning. I don't know if…if the talking one was, um, was the same type of creature. As the other ones." Remembering this idea made her not feel at all steady anymore.

"A gunman from Haretta said you've seen one of them twice. It's found you two times."

"Three times," she gasped, and kept gasping. Over slow, heaving breaths, while stepping on her own foot, she eventually clarified that she had seen Skullface in Konoha, and on a riverbank over a year later, and then in Haretta the next day. And that he had demanded she pass the message that he was not to be hunted. The left-hand man's mouth fell open and he looked helplessly away from her.

The man on her right, who wore the beard, stepped in front of the left one to shield him from her sight. In a voice that would brook no argument he informed her, "If all that is real, then that thing is _following_ you."

Sakura instinctively bowed her head to submit to his insistence, but still had a lucid thought in response: _'Zabuza said that, and he's wrong.'_ Add to that, Madara had said to her face that he wasn't following her. She curled her lip both of those awful names sharing space in her mind at once.

"He is _not_ following me. He said so."

"Of course it's following you! You think a demon like that would tell you the truth?! You think the fourth time it comes it won't take you for the sacrifice that you are?" He held up four fingers with the thumb tucked in and jabbed his hand forward; the palm nearly clapped her in the nose. "Do you even understand what you're carrying? A surefire return of one of them, and you're walking right in the middle of a town—get the hell away from me."

" _You_ get the hell away fro—from me," Sakura gasped back, weakly, because she was crying in full now. Her body disregarded her again.

"Leave or I'll make you leave," he said, so close their shadows overlapped.

Still she was crying and had to respond in between gasps. "I can't help what happened to me. That's not fair."

"Not fair of you to dangle a bomb around people's front doors," he hissed, pushing his breath into her eyes. "If there are creatures that can hunt in natural light, with no eclipse, then make them follow you to the northern continent or the bottom of the ocean somewhere."

"I—"

"You'd do some good with that curse if you had any balls!"

" _I—"_

The man reached out with one of his gloved hands and shoved her.

Sakura fell back, almost fell down fully. She slapped her hand over her collarbone where the man's hand had pushed in and where she felt pain from the growing bruise.

She bowed her head, submitting, and pivoted on her heel to walk away fast as she could.

' _It's not my fault,'_ Sakura thought and thought again. She thought this until the words were slurring even in her mind. They blended. They faded. They were noise.

No. T. Mmm. Ah. Fah. Aull. Aullltt _ttt._

Then Tsunade appeared. She shouted upon finding her and grabbed at Sakura's arms.

"Where the hell have you been?! I've been looking for you for three hours!"

"Nnahh," came out of Sakura's mouth. It was a sighing sound at first, then picked up a high pitch and became a mewl. She couldn't control it.

There was a pressure under her rear and legs so she turned away to observe it: it was an upturned bucket that she was sitting on. It had hard edges round the bottom that pressed unkindly into her skin. There was a wall behind her made of sheet metal: the broad side of a barn. Likely shipped from Arinsk. Orange light all around, because the sun was going down.

Tsunade's fingers touched her face and gently pushed on her head to make her look one way or the next. Sakura tried to avoid looking at her, but Tsunade got what she wanted: a measure of her pulse, the dilation of her pupils, their reaction to the light of the setting sun. As she maneuvered Sakura's face, she apologized for doing it. Sakura heard only wordless murmuring.

While she felt Tsunade's hands and heard Tsunade's voice, she did not see her at all. Sakura saw a house falling down and saw two men staring at her with their mouths parted. She could imagine, so easily, those two things merging to become real. It seemed wholly possible that if they could, those men would push her into Mr. Hayate's doomed house to be eaten and gone. This thought had a palpable ugliness like the flesh of a snail; it made her turn her head and retch. Nothing came up but spit.

Tsunade's hands were on her shoulders and moved to her hands, holding them so gently they were nearly slipping out of her grip. "I'm right here. You're all right. I promise you're all right."

Sakura pulled her hands out of Tsunade's grip. "I'm _fine!_ " she yelled.

"You're going to be all right, no matter how it feels right now," the doctor told her.

Right now, Sakura was feeling slime and gore on her skin that she felt when she beat the worm creature because the memory of it was so near, so intimate, it came when she called like it was loyal to her. It was near and constant more than anything else left to her. It was an unheard-of victory no one had ever accomplished before and people only wanted her to dead for it and did not give a shit at all.

"You're here with me in Minci. We're alive, we're okay," Tsunade was saying. "Nothing is coming to hurt you. Nothing and no one. That man who insulted you today have been dealt with."

Sakura breathed in and out, pushing away the imagined feeling of worm flesh.

"I spoke to the policeman here. There's only one, and two gunmen, they're all locals. They heard what happened to you. The man who you spoke to today is being commanded by the gunman to leave you alone. They know you didn't do anything wrong."

"I _didn't!_ I'm _fine!"_ Her scream echoed over a cornfield, taking up more space than the rest of her ever had.

"I told you some people know my name. And give a shit," Tsunade said with a stern nod. "They heard what I said, and they know what happened, and they do not blame you. The creatures in Haretta, and Konoha, it's not your fault that they came."

' _I don't fucking know anymore. And I don't know what's wrong with me,'_ she thought, because there was no possible way to speak it. _'I don't know what's wrong with people who, who just hear me and then hate me, who—'_ Her thoughts died away like cornstalks falling, weighted by rain or thunder, something she'd known before and ignored and let fester. Like everything else.

"Every. Time. I say this," she said, quieter than she meant. "It's worse. I tell—I tell the story worse. I feel worse. It's not getting better. I'm not getting better."

Tsunade stayed still and near. She kept going, spilling.

"Today there wasn't a gun in my face," she added, but Tsunade didn't blink. "Compared to that, or to the creatures in Haretta it wasn't, it wasn't anything. I should have been able to stand up for myself more, like talk him down…and…and I didn't. I couldn't talk. Everything stopped working."

"You're not going to feel exponentially better with time," Tsunade explained, watching the girl crumple away from her. "This reaction you had to him, it is _normal,_ Sakura. Things like this are going to happen. Even when you feel better. Even when you feel strong. This is going to take a long, long time—"

Sakura jerked forward, fingers grasping at her own knees. "I can'tbe followed by this forever! I won't make it. Someday I'll just, fall over and die. And people will be happy I'm dead," she sobbed at last, and took in a haggard breath, and wailed. "I tried to keep going and people don't care, they just want me dead! I can't die! I can't die! Don't let me die."

When she bent inward, her spine unable to hold her upright, Tsunade leaned in to catch her as her mother did when she was small. Sakura did not press her away.

"I will not let you. Long as you're with me, long as you know me, I won't."

"I want my mom," Sakura begged, her breath jagged. "Mom."

"I know, dear. But she's not here. I'm so sorry."

" _I want my mom!_ "

Sakura wanted to press her away, away from this woman who dared to mimic her mother, but she had no energy to do so. She smelled wheat and fresh grass, from the nearby farm field or Tsunade herself or both. Her arm roved gently up and down Sakura's back till her jagged gasps evened out, as though smoothing air bubbles out of dough. The poison feeling was slowly being pressed out of her.

Tsunade's mouth and chin were pressed against her head; her breath made wisps of Sakura's hair move. Her breath was warm. The air was warm.

A question came to her ears gently: "Sakura, do you want to talk about Ino?"

Sakura's back tightened under Tsunade's gentle hand. "No."

Both of them were on the ground now, with soft grass underneath them and the burning color of the sky fading to cool night.

She was thinking it, so asked it: "Do you think I'm actually cursed from what happened in Konoha?"

"No," Tsunade said with finality. "I think it was random, and that creature Madara being there was random. I don't believe you did anything to cause it."

"Then what did?" she asked, still pressing her head into Tsunade's collarbone. "Why are there things that walk around in natural light, and talk? Why is that happening now? I wish…I wish I saw the name of that damn newspaper and could ask the people who printed it," She sniffed, and then paused to take a breath, wherein Tsunade did not say or answer anything. "Did you ever hear what Suigetsu said when he woke up?"

This time Sakura did pull away. Tsunade's arm slid gently up her back and over her shoulder, looking honest and serious. Sakura's face was red and marred by wet glimmers of tear tracks. "I thought you might…maybe get a telegram, or letter about it?" she asked, voice slightly raspy now. "I told Zaku t-to tell me when he did. I thought I'd hear it through you. I…I forgot till now." Rather, she hadn't purposefully thought of it, like she purposefully did not think about Hidan, or Madara, or the butcher woman in Emmha, or a great many poisonous things.

"I've received a few," Tsunade admitted. "But only last week was there any real news from him. And I debated how or when to tell you. I'm sorry for keeping it already."

Sakura did not feel poisoned now, and Tsunade's embrace had been warm and good to her, but no longer. Now the evening air and herself were both cool. She wore no thankful smile.

"Sorry, huh?" Sakura said, wiping at another tear. This apology meant far less to her than Tsunade's previous one in Haretta, but she didn't have the strength to be offended by it just now. "This affects me a lot and you're just—sorry. Okay."

There was a beat where Tsunade didn't speak and both of them felt her palpable regret. Nothing showed on her face; the tracks of tears on Sakura's face continued to glimmer.

"My plan was to tell you once we got to Rissinia. It's walled, it's urban, something like Madara can't just wander in over a little fence or anything. You wouldn't feel in danger there."

This gave her pause and made her shoulders stiffen already. "Okay."

Tsunade's face was as stony as hers was. "Suigetsu has been in and out of some medically induced comas. My medical officer there in Haretta chose to do so to give his spine a chance to heal without motion making his back tear. We're not sure if he'll walk again, and he's been bedridden for almost two months. Even when we were in Arinsk, that's the only news that was waiting for me at the telegram office. My real news was in Farrah."

"There was no telegram office there."

"The man with leprosy. With the bandaged face? He had one in his house, and knows Zaku. While his wife was showing off all their weird instruments to you, Dosu took me to his office, where he had messages from Zaku waiting for me." Sakura barely remembered and didn't care to think on the matter. She waited. "Suigetsu is awake and alive and he can move his toes. And he said he came across the creatures on accident. He thought he was hunting escaped circus animals."

"What," Sakura grumbled weakly back.

"Madara had the front feet of a bird, did he not? But his back feet were paws, like a large cat's." This knowledge existed faintly and foggily in Sakura's mind, but for most of the time Madara was ever in her line of sight, it wasn't his feet she was looking at. But this was true. Even though he didn't have a bird's head like the other beast that had been with him in Haretta, they both had, somehow, two pairs of impossible mismatched feet. Catbirds, they were.

"Catbirds," Sakura mumbled under her breath, though her mentor caught this and gave it an acknowledging hum and tilt of her head.

"Good word for them."

"I guess there's not an existing word for them otherwise," she replied, her voice flat. "So Suigetsu saw some confusing footprints."

"'Escaped circus animals' isn't that far-fetched a guess if you see big bird prints and big cat prints all right next to each other," Tsunade said. "That's what the merchant who hired him said he thought it was, and Suigetsu apparently didn't bother to think on that further. He was just wandering the hills beyond some wealthy man's property, thinking he'd track lions or ostriches or whatever the hell, and he saw those creatures. I described Madara to him, but he wasn't sure if he was there or not. He said he saw seven or eight of them together."

Sakura was on her knees and fell to the side, landing on one thigh. Her mouth had dropped open by itself. "Eight—eight of them," she gasped, holding fistfuls of grass.

"He said," Tsunade kept on with a huff of mirthless laughter, "that he heard some of them talking. Talking about where they should travel and who was in charge of certain 'patrols.' He listened to them for five minutes or so before they smelled him. They talked right to him, demanded he come out of hiding, but he didn't. He tried to sneak away into the woods, and all eight of them started coming after him."

"Oh god. Oh my god."

"He waded in rivers, hid in tall grass, real adventurous safari stuff," Tsunade went on. She caught herself and wrung all the tense, forced humor out of her voice. "He managed just under an hour before one of them must have caught his scent, I guess, because it charged him. And next he knew, he woke up in Haretta after we'd left."

Sakura had gathered herself back up onto her knees at this point, hands on her lap and bent limply forward. "Okay," she said again and licked her lips. At her knees, the grass seemed very dark indeed because all the sunlight had now gone away. "So I'm guessing Suigetsu saw them without an eclipse, too."

"The message didn't specify any time of day or night. But he did specify 'there was nothing snuffing out natural light.' So yes."

"Do you know what makes the eclipses?" she asked. She picked at her thumbs while doing so, avoiding eye contact. It was a silly, curious thing, for despite her many accomplishments and understanding of sciences, Tsunade Senju, like most folk, probably knew those mysteries as much as she knew exactly how deep the oceans were.

"I don't," Tsunade replied, sounding surprised. "You think because I know a few gunmen squadrons, and some government men know me because I've beat them at cards that I know the mysteries of the earth?"

"That was my thought process almost exactly," Sakura admitted, avoiding eye contact a lot harder now. "You're very knowledgeable. You've tried to save my life before. Seemed possible you might know that and be keeping it a secret from me. That's…certainly within your right." There was a hint of bitterness in that last word, a hint of discomfort from Tsunade baiting Sakura in the Haretta courtroom, and bitterness at Suigetsu's knowledge being kept from her for even three days, and bitterness that was still spilling out of her from when two strange men told her she should kill herself.

Tsunade's hand reached over and came over Sakura's hand on her knee, and squeezed it. "I am telling the truth to you, Sakura," she said, catching her eye this time. "I have been around the continent and off of it, yes, and I know some unpleasant things about men who could buy my hospital in Tidusa. I've seen some shit that makes me want to drink. But I'm not privy to what causes dark times."

There was a silence as they sat there in the natural dark, staring at each other and at the rustling cornstalks nearby. Now there was a light coming from the very edge of them—a man in overalls carrying a lantern and two dogs walking at his side. All three in the party stopped and stared once Tsunade and Sakura appeared in their field of vision.

"We'd better go," Tsunade said. "I wish we could sit here and wait until you feel all right, but I know you don't. And you don't have to. But I have to ask you to walk with me. Got some wine and venison steak waiting for us."

"I do feel better," Sakura said. She kept Tsunade's hand in hers, but worked to push herself off the ground with the other and brush at her pink blouse. It was still her favorite blouse. "I feel like I…vomited a whole lot."

The doctor smirked at her. "I'm glad you expelled some of this from you. I was waiting for that to happen, ever since Haretta. Do you understand that it needed to happen?"

In truth she did, and perhaps it was better that this was set off by a pair of men telling her to fuck off, rather than a crazed crowd pointing guns at her. Or perhaps it already had. Hadn't she choked this woman and expelled some of her feelings with screams and spit in her face? Hadn't she gone numb completely for the next day or so?

"Yes," was all Sakura said, whirling all these things in a ball in her head.

She was late in noticing that the farmer was approaching them with his two point-eared, muscular hounds tense and watching them carefully. Tsunade waved to him and did not let go of Sakura's hand as she apologized for their trespassing at his barn. But the man must have recognized Tsunade, for he brushed off her apology and offered them some water and bread in his home. This was declined.

Tsunade led them down a road that seemed to lead nowhere, lit only by starlight and the half moon. It led them back to the town proper eventually, where oil lamps and a few electric ones gave faint light to the streets.

They passed a building the size of a cottage which advertised itself as the _Burelia Police Headquaters,_ despite having a flowerbox at the window and looking otherwise like a civilian home, and with a casual civilian's spelling mistake. The front door was open. Home furnishings likely arranged by the policeman's wife showed through the gap. On the policeman's couch, visibly being scolded by the lone town policeman and one of the two gunmen, was the shorter, beardless one of the two men that Sakura had spoken to earlier in the day.

It was not the man who had pushed her or told her to take her curse and herself to the bottom of the ocean. It was the one who hadn't spoken at all once he knew who she was. The one who had stood silently by while the louder, taller man had stood in front of him. He had been the only one to go to the police about her.

They locked eyes for a moment because Tsunade had allowed her to stop in a spot in the street where she could look in at him. The gunman waved to her—his gun was a little pistol, worn casually on his belt—but the policeman, who brandished only a bat, did not. The man on the couch, clean-shaven and brunette, had no expression when looking at Sakura. But light from within gave her a good enough view of the shadows on his neck, a telltale sign of bulging veins. Tension in his neck as though he were silently screaming into a closed mouth.

' _Screw you!'_ Sakura said back in a silent scream of her own. She kept watching him till he was forced to look away by the policeman blocking her view of him.

"So fuck that guy," Tsunade said at her side. She led them towards the inn, which was only a pair of rooms built onto the side of a low-ceilinged restaurant.

"There was a second man, too," Sakura said lowly. "That guy didn't even say anything to me. It was a taller man with a goatee who yelled at me and shoved me."

"That one apologized to the gunman," Tsunade replied, opening the restaurant door for her. The space was empty; only the proprietor was there, light and clanking noises coming from the kitchen threshold. "That one sitting the policeman's house did not. He's the one who was pushing to arrest you."

"He's gonna want to arrest a bunch of people round the continent, then," Sakura scowled. They stood near a table, hands atop the backs of their chairs. Tsunade waited for Sakura to meet her eyes, but she only watched her own hand clinging to the wood. "This is happening to more people than just me. They can come out in natural light now. That's real. No way to know if it will stop. Or won't."

"Did you know that I carry a gun?" Tsunade said in a low whisper. Sakura finally lifted her head.

"No. You're a gunman?"

"Technically. It's mostly because I slept with one." Tsunade said, flipping one of her twin ponytails over her shoulder. "It was before I'd settled into a single medical practice. So they didn't know I wouldn't be joining their ranks forever. Can't take the license away now, though. If we're technically in danger every second of every day, having steeds who sense them before us will help, and my pistol will help."

Sakura remembered that she hadn't touched her steel bat from Konoha in weeks, and her mother had bought that to help her. It hadn't helped with Hidan, where it was out of her reach, and it was out of reach and absolutely worthless when she was in front of Madara, and she hadn't practiced her swings in so long her muscles may have atrophied. Even the brass knuckles from Tidusa, ones she'd bought to help herself feel better, sat gathering dust in one of her stag's saddlebags.

Her physical strength that she prided herself on when she was younger and not homeless had fallen by the wayside for a long while. This must change. She voiced this thought to Tsunade.

"Then we'll practice," Tsunade said. "I've gone too long without lifting, too. Let's get strong again, eh?"

"I could be strong again," Sakura nodded, as though agreeing to a restaurant entrée.

"Yes, you can," Tsunade Senju replied. "I know it. So do you. Even if it doesn't feel so right now."

She didn't feel so hurt as she had a mere hour ago. She didn't feel any more confident, that a loud man calling her names might not shatter her again. But she did not feel quite so…poisoned. Poisoned, was the word that often came back. Maybe because the worm's flesh had looked poisonous. But under her hand she felt only the smooth wood of the chair, a true texture, nothing imaginary.

"Let's eat," she said, almost smiling. "Where's the venison you mentioned?"

* * *

It took three more weeks to ride to Rissinia, a home to opera and theater. Sakura did not feel poisoned.

She gleefully pointed out the phone lines stuck into the ground at a nearby village which supplied woodcraft to the city, which would lead them straight there. Once her routine questions were asked to locals, and confused strangers pointed her to Rissinia as a possible hub to find people she knew, she led Tsunade down the path with her stag at a strong trot. The weather was overcast but warm, she had bought a new dress and new undergarments, almost got drunk last night, and she was feeling well. She patted her stag on the neck as they rode.

She still hadn't named him yet, but felt she was nearer to a decision than before. It would be a fairly important step to name this thing, Sakura felt. Her list of well-liked names included possibilities that she thought Ino might like, and ones that Tsunade had given her. To choose one path or the other felt too significant a choice to make lightly, so she just did not make it.

"Warehouses down there," Tsunade commented, gesturing north. "Storage for all that stage equipment, probably some dorms for all their trillions of young actors."

' _Ino wanted to be an actor,'_ Sakura thought with a grin. _'She said she wanted to travel here one day. Bet she coulda made it!'_

To their left, the landscape began a slow downhill descent that plateaued by a river wide enough for barges, and then some distance beyond, four or five rectangular metal buildings with smaller shed-like ones dotted round. Tiny specks of moving people could be seen moving between them.

"I like Tidusa theaters all right," Tsunade said, lounging back in her saddle. "But Rissinia's are bigger, and they always kill it with production here. Wish I could have lived her sometimes."

Sakura idly held on to one of the lower tines on her stag's antlers. "Why'd you choose to stay in Tidusa?"

"The beach is lovely," she replied, still looking downhill. "Beautiful white brick everywhere. Stag races. Monday nights at the Soul. You ever went to the Soul? On Crofter Road?"

With a lazy hum, Sakura sifted her memories of Tidusa. She remembered crying in that hospital archive room for Lee, and her nice apartment with the tall window, and the despair of thinking that she might never find home or family again and die with no one caring just like the men in Burelia wanted her do.

She smiled and said, "Yeah, just twice. I never got alcohol there, but they made this nice rice and dumpling dish I liked."

"Oh, little girl, that place is made for taking shots. I hope you try shots one day instead of just watching me."

"I _did_ try, twice! You were just too drunk to remember."

"What? When?"

"In Farrah and in Arinsk. Just a couple shots each time."

"Great god, I got so drunk in Arinsk. That whooping cough bitch? I hope a bird shits in her eye."

"If you _don't_ get drunk so you can definitely walk me back to where we're sleeping, I'll try to find my limit on shots, for real."

"Well then, today's out of the question," Tsunade said, and dipped into one of her four saddlebags to pull out a half-empty purple bottle. "I promised myself I'd finish the Torino today, you wanna sip? Too late." She whipped the bottle upward by the neck and gulped, gulped, gulped.

Tsunade pretended to be considering giving Sakura a sip all the way to Rissinia proper. At the end, Sakura got two mouthfuls. Her mouth tasted of cherries once the walls of the city were within sight.

"Lot of entrances for a walled city. It's like it's fill of holes," she observed. Just the section of the wall within her sight had three arched entranceways. One of them appeared to be for wagon traffic only, the other two were mixed.

"Yeah, it's just for the look. Walled cities are cities with money. You should see the capital. Anyway, they're gonna do a quick bag search, 'cause cities with money are cities with thieves, too. Hah!" She giggled to herself while stuffing the bottle back away.

Sakura hummed again and looked around. They were closer to the river now but there were no barges or other activity on it. That direction was all flat, open land, with the alleged dormitory buildings in the distance. Before them was Rissinia, inching ever closer. To the right was a wide tongue of woodland stretching near to the city. It had a distinct, manmade treeline, too straight t to be natural. It stood out in a flat area of the country where most trees were thin, tight-together little copses and not much bigger. If Rissinia was a ritzy town, perhaps it had ritzy noblemen who wanted that wooded area to foxhunt without having to travel.

She kept looking that direction, thinking idly of foxhunting, and staring. No movement in the trees, not even a breeze.

There was a single wagon ahead of them, far enough away to have its sounds be almost entirely muffled, but a shout from it drew the women's attention briefly. A child hopped out of the wagon and picked up a sack he'd dropped. Far, far ahead was the tiny, tailed dot of a kite being flown from within the city walls. The stag's antlers shifted to her side, meaning he'd turned his head, and she tried to track his eyes.

He was looking over at the treeline, as she had unfortunately suspected. But nothing was over there, not a movement in the trees, not even the rustling of a breeze. She remembered the day she'd seen Skullface at the river, and how beforehand he'd stopped on a road to look behind them a field, where nothing was there. And then they ran.

"Show me," she whispered to him, as though he might speak to her.

"There," she heard, or decided herself, when she followed the line of his snout. It pointed into the natural shadows of the trees and brush, where branches crossed and undergrowth on the ground was thick. Between these things and between the trees there was something moving.

It was larger than a deer, or a bear or a moose, and darker than all the natural shadows. It was a black, black silhouette stalking through the trees and stalking _her_ with red eyes that tracked her movements as predator tracked prey.

She couldn't tell which one it was from this great a distance. The shape of the neck didn't seem thick enough to be Madara's, who had a sort of mane, but nor could she discern if there was an eagle's beak like Obito had, or if this was another one entirely. One of the eight that stalked Suigetsu. They _stalked_ him, Tsunade had said, before they attacked him and broke his spine and now they _stalked_ her.

' _But you said you weren't following me,'_ Sakura whined to herself. Her hands tightened on the stag's reins. _'But that man said I can't trust anything you say.'_

On her left, Tsunade said a single, hissed word: "What?"

"Catbird," she whispered back, but Tsunade made no sound or reaction to it.

The creature stopped a moment before she spoke and became a stationary shadow, still watching her with red eyes that were—moons of their own.

' _Oh, god.'_

The moons were the eyes of eight man-eating monsters that could walk in natural light and they were the glint of guns pointed at a crying woman and they were a threat to eat her alive and feel her body crunching, squeezing into a throat that would make her from a feeling person to a mash of food and she would _die_ and the decision was made for her by these things imprinted in her head. She had been strong in front of all these things, strong enough to live past them, but not right now.

Sakura clapped her heels against the stag's side, twice, to spur him forward. He was reluctant but she was firm and her gaze upon the catbird even more hard than his. The stag started walking, and then trotting. Tsunade was behind them. Her horse was exhaling hard, frantic breaths through his nostrils and tossing his head as he ran.

They moved away from the creature, and eventually, Sakura turned her head away from its gaze.

Only then did her stomach drop and her grip on the reins become a frantic, skin-puncturing squeeze. Only then did her fear unfreeze and take hold of her. Her stag and Tsunade's gelding were not in full gallop, but a strong canter. They passed the wagon that was ahead of them and came within sight of the gunmen at the gates.

"It won't be able to come inside the city. It'll be shot full of holes before it passes a gate," Tsunade proclaimed at her side. "We can talk about what to do. I can—"

"Shut the hell up," she hissed back.

She did.

Madara had claimed he wanted to use her services as a messenger to humankind. She had promised to fulfill this duty for him again. She had told Tsunade to her face that she would fulfill this duty again. That was some three months ago now. More. The sight of those red eyes on a day when she had been smiling and sighing with pleasure made her regret nothing more in life than that promise.

When they slowed to a trot, Sakura expelled a breath she'd been holding and held her reins up to her chest. She tried to press them between her breasts, till she was clenching them and the fabric of her dress in her fists.

"Entry, ma'am?" said one of the gate guards. He looked up at her with an appreciative smile, which faded upon sight of her face. "Ma'am, are you well?"

"I thought I was," she replied shakily. She'd been well enough to buy a sundress and think she could wear it, just to feel nice. She'd been well enough these past few weeks for most anything. She'd been taking up her bat again. The handle of it was sticking out of her nearest saddlebag.

Sakura managed to loose one hand from fisting the fabric of her dress and touch it onto the bat handle instead. One resting on metal, one grasping herself for purchase. "I'll be all right. Thank you."

Perhaps she would be. Not now, with that thing's eyes on her back, but later. When she felt stronger. When she knew what to do.

Sakura retreated into Rissinia.

* * *

Uchiha meeting next chapter.

This chapter is my least favorite so far even though I feel its content is ultimately necessary. Tsunade and Sakura's relationship needed time to organically grow and become comfortable though still...wobbly, and Sakura still will not lean in to Tsunade's offered help fully. Still, I admit I kept forgetting plot bits from like the halfway point onward, and having to write in excuses, such as Suigetsu being in a coma when he really would have been telling his friends about how he found Madara asap, and the various ways people are reacting to what's happened to Sakura, how soon they hear of it, the spread of monsters that exist in natural light and why, Sakura not using her bat or even physical strength in forever even though I WANTED her to, etc.

Some parts just became a foggy mess just like her life and I pretended that parallel was on purpose. Really I just had a bad writing...year, and felt I'd wasted enough time on this crap and needed to move on already. Next chapter will be WAY more Uchiha-focused and that's the stuff I've got pretty solidly planned. Although one thing I'm still not sure on is: though I've made the Uchiha clan basically non-flying gryphons ("catbirds"), before I had that idea, I imagined/wrote Madara as a more generic monster, "catbird-shaped" but not with a bird head, and I'm not sure if I want him to have a bird head or just be an odd one out, lol. Should Madara have a bird head or like a, dragon/wolf head? These are the important questions. All week I work at my grownup job and think about these things and go home and it's 7pm and I wish I had more time and energy for fics like when I was in high school. Augghhg.

Let me know what you think of my errors and missteps and non-missteps and anything else you've noticed. Constructive criticism welcome, I'm here to write my stupid fantasy stories and also become a stronger writer to make my stpid fantasy stories as legit as possible. Thank you.


	4. Chapter 4

Rissinia was splendid and worthless. Sakura recognized shapes from it that passed her and her mentor by, things like wide windows, carriages and skirts, but she had no reaction to any of them, or the sunlight winking in and out of her eyes as buildings with decorative moulding passed in front of the sun. Behind her was a monster. Ahead was any number of distractions that did nothing.

They'd entered through a residential gate—men who wanted to live close to the foxhunting woods, she thought, and for half an hour or so it was her only thought—which was made up of dusty pink apartments with fake, pastel flowers bursting out of the windowsills. Women sat upon the sills, smoking and looking down at passersby. They looked at Sakura and her hair, but Sakura didn't see them. After a wide intersection, the area became a commercial one immediately.

Smiling tourists were there for the fall plays and some had leaked into the street where the production purchased its wares. Most shopfronts were slim and cramped, broken up by a rare spacious one, and all of them desperately artistic with lights and wide windows and examples of their craft pressed up against the glass. Men and women walked by faster than Sakura's deer was walking. The city carriage horses wore decorative silks on their bridles.

A couple and their child posed before a fountain in the street while a gentleman stood before a camera and tripod to take their picture. Sakura started and blinked at the flashbulb's aggressive burst.

She leaned away from Tsunade's steadying hand and grabbed at one of the tines of her stag's antlers. No one else leaned away from her, or paid attention to her. Their attention was outward on the advertisements and stage pieces and posters. Every entity around them was spending money on the practice of attracting eyes and envy. It was a strange place to be afraid of death.

"Good boy," Sakura said in a quaking voice to her stag, who was sniffing the air and ignoring her. He kept in a straight line regardless; walkers in the street moved uncaring around him like fish going downstream.

"Do you want to get a hotel?" Tsunade asked.

Sakura said _certainly_ , because it was a word that came to mind and not because she heard or understood. They made a left turn onto a new street where there was more hoofed and wheeled traffic but fewer walkers. In this street Tsunade maneuvered Rex in front and made Sakura walk behind her.

The stag followed Rex and Sakura's mind stood still. Tsunade directed them to the end of a street and into three acres of fenced-in pasture squeezed within the urban sprawl. There was a tall house with many windows and a stable, and horses and deer spread around in the acreage, and she was on the ground dismounting, and she was in the lobby standing, and she was in the hallway walking and seeing the head of a badger mounted on the wall. Then her body sat and weighted the bed in their room like a dead animal.

Tsunade stood in front of her. Sakura saw her belt and knees and the desk behind her. The knobs on its drawers were glass. She looked at their pretty glimmer. Tsunade touched a hand to each of her shoulders, leaning down closer.

"Tell me what you're thinking right now."

She did as told: "They'll eat me," she breathed. One hand tried to grip the opposite wrist but it was too weak. "They'll kill me. They could do whatever they want. He, he's going to rip me in half, worse than Suigetsu—"

"Stop. Stop that." She said, and so Sakura did. "They cannot enter this city. There are armed guards at each gate. There are walls. There are gunmen and professional hunters and thousands of people here. We're safe. As long as we're here."

"Am I going to stay here for the rest of my life," Sakura intoned. It came out like a statement instead of a question, without her meaning so. And it went unanswered. Tsunade wasn't responding. She looked up at the older woman and saw pursed lips upon a stony face.

"I believe the gunmen here will have heard about Haretta."

Sakura stared, uncomprehending.

"I know some of the men here. I know what stock they carry. There's a metalworks factory uptown and ore nearby. Bullets. If they stopped shipping today, the city wouldn't run out for weeks."

The comprehension was a slow filter. She eventually leaned slowly back from Tsunade's hands till they fell, and the woman pulled them back to cross her arms.

"You…want to shoot them?"

"I want your opinion," Tsunade said instead. "On whether you believe Madara is following you or not. Whether it wants you to be a messenger or not, or anything else, or if you want to trust what it says at all. Do you want to go in the woods to talk with that thing? When we can stand on walltops and fire on them when they come looking for you?"

Sakura leaned back on the bed on her hands, mouth still open. Her mouth began to shut like a fruit's flesh pinching together with rot.

"You'd kill me," she said through those tight lips. Tsunade's browns furrowed as now the lack of comprehension passed to her. "There's eight of them, you said. Eight man-eating monsters. That expect this, this service out of me. They'll think I 'sent' hunters after them again. They will kill me. I will never leave this city unless I want to be skewered and pulled apart like hyenas eating a fucking antelope, you can't do that to me!"

"I'm not letting you walk outside to have a friendly chat with that demon! _That_ is what could kill you!"

She jerked forward. "We've been walking outside for four months and it could have come up to our camp literally anytime. anywhere! What the hell was your plan then? I always knew they'd come back! I did! I knew I'd never be done with this!"

"I thought they'd behave like animals and move on, or forget, and it was foolish of me," Tsunade ground out. "I prayed I could take you out of their sight and mind, and they wouldn't travel north when cold weather is coming, and I could take you away from them…and if one _had_ ever come to us in the wild, I would shoot it in the eye. I was ready to do that."

"You seriously think you could have done that?! I watched Madara be shot in Konoha, those two gunmen who did it were gutted and killed because they were just as stupid as you are!" Sakura was off the bed by now. Her face was in Tsunade's and bits of her wild pink hair were touching Tsunade's head. "'Shoot it in the eye,' are you joking? You wouldn't be talking so bold if it was your life being played with. If you were the one being stalked. It must be so nice, huh? It must be _nice_ to be famous and important and have gunmen friends who will shoot down all your problems for you."

Two hard hands clapped onto Sakura's shoulders and gripped them. She was lifted slightly off the floor. "I need you to end this stupid outburst right now before I throw you into the wall. Calm. Down."

Sakura kicked out at her knee with a wildcat's growl. They both went down.

Her own head smacked against the edge of the bed and her arm against the nightstand next to it. Something fell from there. Something like a roar sounded from not a meter away. Sakura tried to bolt, but only crashed into the bed a second time. This time when Tsunade's hands caged her, she didn't resist. She lay helpless while tremors ate what little strength her body had, like there was a weak, infant wildcat in limp death throes inside her. She hadn't the strength to pull away when Tsunade shouted into her ear.

"Are you scared for your life?! _I am, too_!"

Sakura cowered in her hands. Her tremors melted to whimpers in a second.

"I'm afraid I'm powerless and I'll die powerless! I don't know that important gunmen friends will make a difference at all! I want to save you and I don't know if I can do shit, I'm so terrified!"

"I'm sorry, I'm very sorry," Sakura said in her jagged exhales. "I know. I, um…" She didn't continue.

Tsunade kept her hands on the girl's shoulders. "I don't know what to do, so I'm doing what I know, and I know men who will lend me their arms. Because, because Sakura, you can't be here in this city waiting forever, with them outside you would—"

Sakura didn't want to hear about what she would do with them outside so she just said it, to expel it: "I _have_ to go out and see if they really want to talk, because I'm going to snap in half if I don't."

Tsunade could not say anything just then. She felt Sakura shaking under her, a few of the spasms so strong that they moved Tsunade's body atop her.

"I—I have to stop feeling like this," Sakura murmured. Her voice was raspy and weak. "If they mean it, and they won't kill a messenger…I can be…"

"…"

"It can't be worse than the first time. It can't." She could always soil her pants in front of them, and feel the sting of humiliation along with the pain of pulling flesh as she died. Zabuza could be there to laugh as she died. It could always be worse.

Tsunade backed away and her arms fell away from Sakura for a second time. She half-fell against the wall, her legs resting limply against Sakura's on the carpet.

"I don't know if that's true."

Sakura's hands curled up near her chest, where the pain and now embarrassment were growing so strongly. If Tsunade was right and nature had its way, she would die like a prey animal for those beasts. Her last moments would be pain unlike she'd ever felt before, and then anonymous silence for all time after that. Dead like the motherfuckers in Burelia wanted her to be.

"I don't care what you say," Sakura whimpered, wiping her own tears. "If I do it, I can, can…not feel this bad." _I can feel like I threw up,_ she spoke to herself only, thinking of the cornfield in Burelia.

"I could drain some more of the…poison," she added.

Tsunade did not say anything for a long time. For a long time, the only sounds were Sakura's little gasp-sobs that went on, even when her small death throes finally passed. Their pants and shoes made tiny, soft scrapes along the carpet. Sakura's fingers held the edge of the bedsheet.

The sun was going down.

"I'm going to speak to some of the gunmen I know, and I want you to come, too," Tsunade said. She, too, could only rasp now, with so dry a throat as she had. "I want them to know we're here. I want them ready in case, in case they have to be."

Sakura had a pulled-out section of bedsheet curled up near her chest, resting on her knees. "I want to practice with my bat. At a park." She said quietly. "This is a big city. They must have a park with an exercise section. Tidusa did. I need to do my exercises. Maybe a gym."

Gently, Tsunade told her, "We can do that. But guns are a better defense than a bat. A bat will not do anything to Madara."

"I _know!_ " the girl spat back; Tsunade visibly flinched in surprise. "I want to do it for me. I want to move." She dropped the bedsheet and moved. Her body was slow and creaking. Sakura rose like an old woman, taking too much time for what she needed. "Let's find someplace right now. Please."

Tsunade got up relatively smoother, but for holding her side where Sakura's shoe had punched into her. Tsunade gathered purse and coin. They went into the bathroom separately to gather their hair and clothes a bit, and to breathe on their own. They left the room together without speaking.

* * *

' _Those mouthy fucking sluts!'_ spoke Sakura's true anger as she slammed her bat into a cloth-wrapped beam. _CLANNNG,_ it spoke back, in suffering.

The cloth and the beam itself were torn and bruised from the bat's metal itself, and from the spikes on the end, which she adored. Her arm muscles remembered this motion well. It was burned strongly into her from a few good months of practice with Tsunade upon trees and practice beams in parks, and from her childhood, where youth in Konoha were encouraged to own and practice handling a weapon. _Why_? she thought once about that idea, and then stopped.

The bat was her strength, which she'd ignored for so long. It was all that was threatening about her. Boys in the town used to marvel at her strength, at her sweet face and pretty painted fingernails and incredible rosy hair that bounced. And they dismissed and hated her strong body that carried weights made for men. With these arms she carried the bat that was given to her by her mother. Her mother would have loved to see this, this beating of the practice beam till it was nearly broken.

The beam was the girls in Calstoa who called her a tavern slut for no reason. It was Zabuza who was always cruel and dismissive. It was Hidan. Hidan.

' _I'll fucking gut you. I'll kill you. Stay away from me, I'll kill you!'_

The beam spoke _CLANG CLANGG CRRK CRKKKK_ and it cracked. Her arm and shoulders ached.

"Slow it down before I have to pay for it," Tsunade admonished from nearby. She, too, lifted weights for men. She lifted weights that Sakura could not. She was behind Sakura and out of her field of vision, but the hard clank of the irons that were as big around as her huge bosom was not easily ignored.

Sakura did slow it down. She turned around and set the bat on the ground, or rather on the rubber mat upon the gym's floor. She leaned on it and smiled. "I can pay for it myself if I break it. I want to do another ten minutes with this and then the running course."

"It's four-thirty. The meeting with the gunmen is at five o' clock."

"Gunmen?"

"Yes."

"The same ones we met yesterday?"

"Slightly bigger men than those," Tsunade replied, keeping her gaze down as she lifted. Sakura remembered speaking to some men a little but, and Tsunade speaking to them a lot, and several of them covertly staring at her. These were slim flashes with little substance. Her mind had turned away from most of it.

"The ones we spoke to about Haretta yesterday apparently didn't make the message to their superiors clear. Or they don't believe what they said. They asked for 'clarification.' So I'll be clarifying." At this, she set the weighted bar down. _CLANG._ "So finish up in five minutes so we can shower beforehand. You won't have to speak. I can do the talking—"

"If I won't be speaking, do I need to come?"

Tsunade placed her hands on her hips. "And why wouldn't you come? Do you have somewhere else to be?"

"Just here. I want to stay here at the gym. There's people here and things to do, and if they don't need to see me in person this time, then why not? Is that okay?"

Neither truly knew the answer to this. Tsunade was slow to articulate an answer resembling yes. She didn't hide her disbelief, either.

"I don't want you to be alone right now," Tsunade decided. "We've only been here a couple of days. We're not settled on _exactly_ what to do yet. And—"

Sakura shut her down with a smile and a flip of her hair that she had practiced on many people. "And I'm telling you different now, because I'm here in basically a stress-relief center! I feel better here than I do trying to go to sleep. I feel good moving and sweating. And I damn sure would feel better here than standing in front of gunmen again. I'd rather be here."

Behind them, a man chortled at his friend's poor push-up form. Sakura kept on smiling, standing airily while Tsunade's eyes skewered her.

"The gunmen sergeant will want to see you anyway. Even if you don't say a word. So you're coming," she stated.

"I'm not going to run away," Sakura said with a huff. "You think I'm going to throw myself off the walltop into the woods? I want to be _here._ To enjoy myself a little. If that's acceptable. If that sergeant guy wants to see me, then…then just come get me."

Tsunade's honey-brown eyes did not skewer her any longer. She lifted up her weighted bar to set onto its proper spot along the wall. "I imagine you'll be done before I am."

"Then after I shower, I'll sit in the front and read the paper or something. I won't leave. I promise. Tsunade, there's no reason to think me a liar."

"Not yet," the doctor conceded, and walked past her. "I'm showering. I'll be back in two hours or less. Think of what you want for dinner."

Sakura told her okay, and thought, _'I am an invincible deer goddess! I mean, bear goddess! Lion, yes, lion! My fists will set you on fire, you little bitch!'_ and got back to batting. When it wasn't enough, she took her bat with her to a different spot where a punching bag painted all black was hung from the wall. It bore scratches and bruises from beatings past.

' _I've always wanted to have 'beatings past,'_ she thought with a grin. She gave it a punch to remember—or not. Not as strong as she wanted. She kept going.

 _Wham, wham, WHAM._

' _Walk by on the city street with my formal best. My dress is black and gold—no, no, it's white and gold. Good colors for a lion, you know. Or wait, white and red? Anyway, it's gorgeous. My hair is fresh. Floral perfume and white sandals. Men part on the sidewalk in front of me because they know me. From beatings past. And from their dreams where they wish they could touch me. Well, you fools, try and catch me, I'll beat your ass concave! Try me! Fight me! Fight me!'_

Sakura's fantasies went on this way. She was sweating and glistening and smelled like two sweating workmen by the end of her run around the dirt track outside. Her hair was barely long enough to be worn in a tail by now; some of it had fallen out of the tail and hung as free as her bangs. She didn't even tie it up again.

The men who had been doing pushups and arm exercises nearby glanced up, and something made them guffaw at the sight of her when she walked past. She did not lift her head or say anything to them, because in her mind, they parted in front of her and made way for her glorious presence. In the changing room, she stepped into a shower stall and rinsed her glorious presence away. She had floral-scented soap and shampoo and that became her presence instead.

After walking into the front room, an employee nearly bumped into her. "Oh, I'm very, very sorry," Sakura said, skittering mouse-like out of his way.

She skittered back to the fantasy too, thinking of Calstoa women who would apologize to her similarly. She walked towards an empty table by the wide front windows. Rissinia newspapers and a pile of city magazines lay strewn about on it and obviously well-perused. She took a seat, crossed her legs, and started sorting the material.

The first paper was from over a week ago, the second from yesterday. They had weather reports, trade exchanges, and upcoming books which Sakura all absorbed with interest. Next was a magazine about coming theater productions. It had interviews from directors she knew, a narrative piece about narrative, and another on animals used in productions. It was common for _Queen of the Harpies_ productions to make use of trained eagles that flew around the stage and seating area during the show, but what about larger animals? Rissinia was one of the few cities that hadn't banned the use of tigers on the stage after an incident at the capital years ago where a tiger leaped into the orchestra pit.

Giggling, Sakura quickly inducted this fact into her fantasy from earlier and imagined herself walking on the street, crowds parting around her and her beautiful dress and her tiger companion who walked with her. What would his name be? She kept reading.

The piece also mentioned wolves in plays. Knowing human touch from birth, human imprinting, human care and trust and training. A silver-haired animal trainer wearing a mouth-covering mask was pictured on a single-page spread with his animals: his left hand rested on the back of a grey wolf and his right on a half-grown, lanky tiger. They were in some fenced-off area of a park, with passersby and fans staring into the scene from the corners. They all wore sunny summer colors: bright yellow and white and green. Green and black. Sakura stopped breathing.

Green and black, there in the corner.

Green and black, in profile, walking away.

 _Rock Lee._

Is it? Is…it?

…Yes.

She breathed his name, inhaled him, exhaled poison.

 _Sweet Sakura,_ she thought when she saw it. He would say that to her. She could hear him saying it right now.

 _Is that real? Is that a mistake?_ She thought next. It could be anyone, any young man with a bowl cut and a strong jaw. But there was a strong profile and stern face, because he was always more disciplined than any youth around him. His hair was a little longer than she remembered, but unmistakable. He wore a workman's basic sleeveless shirt like he was walking to a construction site located on the opposite page. He was there on _this_ page, alive and well. His shirt and hair fit him so well. _So_ well. Alive and well. Truly.

 _Truly,_ she heard inside her head. Lee's voice, as she heard it when she cried over the sink in Tidusa Hospital.

' _Are you here?'_ she spoke into the void, into herself.

She listened.

…

'…'

Rock Lee was her tears, flowing so mightily she had to blink and they overflowed, and kept overflowing. She held the magazine away to keep it from getting wet, letting her tears hit the table instead. A couple walking by stared at her and then ignored her. Lee in the magazine did not disappear or run away when she blinked. He remained, even when she tried to squint and see someone else in his face, just in case. But that face only belonged to him and it was still here for her.

She had seen hundreds of strangers, but today she saw Lee.

"I found you," she said into her hand, muffled, adoring. "I _found_ you. Lee."

The magazine was called _Light and Star._ Beautiful and bright star, Rock Lee. Beautiful Lee. She tore the page out and dropped the magazine next to the others.

Sakura promptly left the gym and her little bag of sweaty clothes and toiletries behind. She made plans and executed them. Like shopping for her barely used spiked gloves and sewing tools in Tidusa, but ecstatic this time. So happy the shopkeeper gawked at her this time. She bought another copy of the magazine somewhere and had it delivered to the inn where her stag was and then she ran away.

The plan proceeded. The need had collared her and she submitted wholly to it. It made her smile as she rushed down the street. Down Galahad, across Ophelia's Way, down two more streets she would never remember. She remembered what she wanted and needed only: Rock Lee's warm hand in hers, where it must be. Right now, only the torn-out page showing his profile was in her hand.

A gate was in sight.

Sakura's pace slowed and she caught her breath. She thought to comb her fingers through her hair a bit, but the effort was token and her mind not fully present. Her mind was wrapped around Rock Lee, _Rock Lee who was alive,_ and the last place he had appeared. The last person—the last living creature she could find who had seen him.

In the interest of looking good for him, she cleared her voice, gave another purposeful combing effort to her hair and straightened up her posture. The shirt she'd changed into after her washing was a charming cream color with a rounded little collar, the pants dusty pink. She'd picked nice colors and shoes in anticipation of going out on the town for dinner tonight, with Tsunade. What would a wall guard think of them? What would he think anything of her, a young woman alone, with no luggage?

Sakura had only one wagon ahead of her in line and then none. "Sir, good evening! Afternoon! Ugh, goodness! I'm so sorry, I was supposed to be on a wagon out of here twenty minutes ago, and they left me behind and now I have to chase them! Some friends, seriously."

"No baggage on your way out, ma'am?"

"My baggage already left without me," Sakura explained with a groan. "I'm not taking anything out of town now but the clothes on my back. Oh, this, this paper here, yeah, but that's it."

The guard reached for it.

' _STAY BACK, LEE!'_

Sakura whipped it backward and all but slapped herself in the chest with it to keep it out of the man's hands. Both stood still for a moment.

At the same time as Sakura began trying to cover herself with a laugh, the guard leaned back, announcing with his posture that he no longer cared. He said, "Get running if you wanna catch them already, next!" Sakura did run, but she didn't remember for how long. A minute or so, she decided. She hadn't even started to sweat.

The gate she'd entered through a few days ago was a long way to her left. And the foxhunting woods not far beyond. She crossed from path to grass, aiming for the woods.

"It'll be fine," she said to herself cheerily. At that moment one of her legs gave way and she fell onto the grass. She tried to laugh at this random accident instead of getting upset. She'd laugh if that happened to one of her friends. If she didn't push past it, it would happen again.

The foxhunting woods was a long, dark stripe of green running left and right, wearing more stripes of shadow and brush inside. It looked massive, faced straight-on. The sight made her uneasy. The sight made her want to sit down with her weak leg and…not go.

She didn't want to go. Then she did go. She got to the same pathway she and Tsunade had walked with their mounts. A man leading a trio of beef cows to the city to be slaughtered passed her by, not meeting her eyes. He didn't see her approach the treeline and start to walk along it, away from the city.

"Where are you. Where are you. Come on. Show up, you devil, or else. Or else I swear." She swore nothing because truly she could do nothing and she was useless as a steel bat in an inn, out of her grasp.

The foxhunting woods dipped away from the path, and then closer to it, and evened out again. Rissinia was getting smaller and smaller behind her. Lord, but the minutes felt like hours and every breath stung with discomfort. Every inhale was a breath of air from the territory of monsters. She exhaled into their breath and their territory. No safe air. Nothing safe. Come on, nothing anywhere was ever safe, not really. This wasn't safe and they might kill her for food. Or for nothing.

I'm out here for nothing.

I'm out here for nothing.

I'm out here to die.

Sometimes I wish I could just die. I don't want to keep waking up to this, I can't do it.

Nobody wants me. Nobody is looking for me. I want my mom.

A short, ugly whine sounded in Sakura's closed mouth and died there. She didn't want to speak anymore.

There was a thing moving almost in tandem with her in the trees. It wasn't the glare of sun on a bead of sap or a shaft of light in the trees. It was not golden like hardened sap or Tsunade's stern eyes, but red like holly berries. They were eyes that were high up near the branches. They reached higher than a man's head. The silhouette around them was a bird's head.

I don't want to die because I have to see Lee and I have to wear my beautiful dress with my tiger, yes, that is the reason.

Sakura was not in her right mind. She had no presence of mind left for thought, for words. Words would be nothing in a predator's mouth. Only the voiceless needs she felt all the time, which she knew how to pursue.

The bird's head had two tufts of fur on the top that grew slightly up and then pointed back. The front feet were bird's feet, talons that were naked and hard-skinned below the knee. The rear feet were heavy lion's paws with a long cat's tail behind. But the tail didn't move. None of it moved, but it did grow larger. It grew because she was walking closer to it.

Sakura's steps were slow and controlled. She planned and manually executed each one to prevent her legs giving out again, from surrendering to their total fear. To fear, her thoughts were nothing, her personhood was nothing. She was but an animal scared for its life. She was panting with the claustrophobic weight of the thing's presence. The nonexistent weight of her meaningless life. In her meaningless life, though, was Rock Lee.

The final step took her underneath the branches of the first tree.

"Are you looking for me?"

It did not speak back. In Sakura's mind were wordless, formless thoughts of death, and if she could inflict it upon herself.

Then:

"Yes."

She exhaled.

She remembered Madara, miles before Haretta, and how he appeared on the other side of a river and he was all-destroying. The moment he had her gaze, she was captured in the red eyes. All stimulus and environment around her was as nothing. There was no river in that memory, not really, no sounds of water or the sandy shore or the trees all around or what the weather was like. Only Madara the beast, standing there, was all. She had fled.

She didn't flee this time. She had Rock Lee in her hand—in just one hand, the right, which held the folded page from a magazine, carefully avoiding creating a crease on him. All her temporary bravado in one hand. It was quickly sizzling.

"I came out to see you," she told it politely, the way her mother taught her. "But I don't recognize you. Have we…met?" Even as the words left her mouth it became clear that this one wasn't the one who had stood by Madara in Haretta. This one was…slimmer. And very still. Like it lay in wait, for a certain response. "Or you wanted to trick me into coming out. Maybe you just like playing with your food."

"There's no trickery," it said, still without moving. The voice was clear and elegant, instead of the deep rumble of Madara's voice, or the rasp of the…other one. "No threat. No harm or death. Only myself, with an offer for you, who has spoken to Madara."

"And why are you offering something to me when you could be stepping on me?" she replied, continuing her proper tone. "I wouldn't believe that that comes naturally to you."

"It is an offer because Madara requests you to come."

They both heard the careful arrangement of the words. They both were still. "What would you do if I turn around and walk away, right now?"

"I would wait for you to return. For a short while. I would bring more kin to watch the walls. We would see you leave." Sakura stopped breathing, but the beast's fine voice kept on. "But I hope that isn't necessary. I hope you want to use this opportunity to speak with me, and tell me why you came to me, too." Twice, the beak opened and shut, seemingly unconnected to the spoken words. Slowly that facet of their speaking was becoming familiar. But the most familiar thing of all was in her hand just now.

"I'll speak to you if Madara speaks to me," she said on behalf of Rock Lee. "I want to…to show him something, and ask him a question. If he's willing to do that, then I'll do what you say."

The catbird blinked for the first time. An emotion floated there in the lovely eyes, something measured and soft, but it wouldn't do to assign human expressions to a beast.

"Then hear me," it said. The hindquarters and tail folded close till the beast was sitting down, catlike, with the tip of its tail carefully arranged next to the talons of the front feet. All the motion barely stirred her, or the grass, or made any sound at all. "I am Itachi. I am not known to you, and you think nothing of a vow from me, but you won't be harmed when you're with me. I've never spoken to a human before, not in this way. I am glad to meet you."

' _You spoke to Suigetsu when you hunted him down, you cunt.'_

The monster that had hunted Suigetsu paused its speech to allow room for a response, but none came. Sakura did not reciprocate the polite words or answer the implied request to give her own name in return.

He continued without comment or complaint: "One of my family is ill. I don't know with what. But you might. I'm told you are trained in these medical sciences, which is the knowledge for healing the sick. Please see him and help him. If you do this, you will have Madara's attention for you own request."

Sakura could not measure the breadth of wild happiness this strange possibility was blooming in her. To give and take and trade with beasts, from Konoha, might help her return to Konoha—in the only way possible. She might yet again hold Lee's hand and laugh with him in a street, in a town. To share a conversation with him and to protect him, to think of someone she actually knew facing her, would justify it all. Itachi saw her smile.

Sakura realized she was grasping the folded page too tight and placed it into her pants pocket. She tempered her smile as she did, as well as her breathing, posture, the fantasies she lovingly held, all were put gently away. Itachi noticed it all play upon her face.

"I'll see the sick one," she said at last. "I won't promise I can cure him or identify what's wrong, because I don't know everything. But I'll try to help."

"Thank you," he intoned, leaning his head slightly down, like a small bow. But he did not break gaze. In his red eyes were rings of thread-thin black. They circled the pupil, like Madara's, but they did not spin in a circle.

"Can you take me to him right now?"

"I can. Let us walk."

Sakura knew the exact answer, number and danger that he spoke of, because of Suigetsu, but pretended she didn't. "Who is 'they?' Who's waiting?"

"My family. They're waiting for you right now, while my ill kin rests with them. Shisui is his name," he answered. His body rose up to a standing position, again without noise.

"I'll do what I can for him," Sakura answered quickly, to stem any other conversation about individual names.

"I will walk slowly for you."

He was slow enough that she could follow, close enough to jump forward and grab the monster's tail if she wished to die. Itachi's movement over the grass pulled her forward; she dared not let him go now. He was an opportunity now, a vehicle to Madara.

From here it was suddenly clear that Itachi was a different creature than Madara. The pelt was smoother. There was barely a mane on the neck and the body looked more furred than feathered. Yes, he was thinner, but perhaps because of a smaller body and not just a smaller pelt. Perhaps he was sent for this errand because he was the pack runt.

Sakura thought all these things while being pulled in Itachi's wake, further into the woods till there was no space between trees to see the city through. Rissinia, the town where Lee had been, got further and further behind them.

When Itachi walked, his bird talons and lion feet made only a tiny ruffling sound on the grass. Even Sakura's breath was louder.

* * *

The march to Madara and his clan was long. Sakura did not remember it.

In later days, she would remember coming to awareness at a point when the sky had begun to change into evening colors. The greens of the woods were turning orange and gold. Around half an hour had gone by, but her body existed in its own time. Every second spent moving through grass or around trees with a catbird was like the one before and after. Every second, her fear was strong and asking her to stop and to cry.

The catbird only looked back at her once. The rustling of its fur and feathered, feet hitting the grass and sediment, were so quiet she could look down at her feet or her folded-up page and pretend she was alone. That he wasn't alive at all and she was only alone in the woods like she had been many times before. Alone in the woods or in her room at the Minazuki, with the wide white window.

The wide window was a clearing, opening the way through the trees to show a small field of wild grass growing on a slight incline in the setting sun. There was a wild azalea not far from the edge of the trees and a stem of nightshade. _Death. DEATH._

In the clearing lay a black body, the size of a moose. It breathed.

Sakura breathed.

Wind gently bent the grass and its pelt, stirring its silhouette. The curved spine faced her, while the legs were pointing away. The head was just barely hidden by this angle. Was it avian like Itachi's, or a strange black dragon's head as Madara's was? Or something new? It could be the rounded, brainless head of a worm. What if she'd been led here to another worm?

Sakura breathed, for Lee, and for her stag, too. He would have liked this place, if there were no beasts in it. But there were. There were many: Itachi, the sick one in the center, and more on the other side just beyond the trees. Multiple beasts lay in the shadows, six of them if Suigetsu was right. Each one had unblinking red eyes. One moved its head to the side as though to get a different angle of her.

All was quiet. The sound of Itachi's body moving was barely audible; Sakura knew he had sat down. Now there was a silent black sphinx behind her, and seven ahead.

"He is there," Itachi said, perhaps thinking she'd gone blind. "He's fatigued. Often coughing. He can't run for how difficult his breath comes. There are sores in his mouth."

"Your family is there," she murmured. "In the trees."

"They are," Itachi conceded casually.

"Why are they back there? Hiding?" The setting sun was behind them, touching the tops of the trees, warming her face. "Are they afraid of me?"

Itachi did not concede anything else, or make any sound. If Sakura turned around, perhaps he would not be there at all. She loathed to make any sound of her own, lest it break this dreamlike balance where her life hung. If she gave any word about sparing her life or not consuming her as prey, her focus may break. Her legs may beg her to collapse and give in, again. Sakura walked forward without saying anything else.

The catbirds across the way were staring at her. Sakura ignored them and cut them out of existence.

She walked forward into the empty grass for Rock Lee. At each step, her will and scant strength abandoned her and fled into the ground. So the walk was slow and controlled. It ended at the sick catbird lying on the ground. It had a bird's head and ear-tufts, not a worm head. That question answered, she began circling the beast, moving around the head.

The cat's tail twitched once; her breath and steps didn't hitch. The front feet—bird feet, slim talons—made a limp scratch at the grass but she didn't dodge away. Her gaze on it was as steady as Itachi's had been on her.

Steady as Itachi, she spoke aloud: "Itachi brought me to see you. I'm here to help with your sickness. Can you hear me?"

The eyelid slid open. It was a half-second eclipse of red.

Sakura did not fall, but was frozen. If it stood up, if it opened its mouth and bit into her and drew her into its throat as fresh meat, she would not be able to move.

"Do not. Hurt me," she commanded, but it was only a whisper. "I can find out what's wrong with you. If you let me look. Do you understand me?"

It coughed messily. The motion of the mouth gave a brief view of the tongue, where reddish sores grew on the flesh.

"Do you understand?"

" _Yes."_

The second time in an hour she'd heard a catbird say yes to her, like she was to be obeyed, which she must believe if she did not want to collapse. Sakura raised her right hand up as though the beast were a dog that would listen to her commands. "Attack me, make any untoward movements at all, and you'll die with this affliction."

The head leaned back, scraping against the orange-lit grass. "I have never done anything untoward—in my life," it rasped with difficulty.

It not only spoke, but possibly told jokes. ' _I should tell you it's cancer. I hope it's cancer.'_

She got to her knees to examine the patient. "Open your mouth so I can see the sores."

The patient did this, splitting the beak in halves divided by a pink tongue with tumor-like growths on it. Leaning a little forward, she saw the sores were throughout the mouth and not just on the tongue. They pressed out stiffly from the flesh around them like red pimples. Nor did the movement of the tongue jostle them. They would feel dense and tight if she touched them, which she was not going to do.

"You've felt fatigue lately," she said as though it were written on a chart before her. She sat back on her legs, hands in her lap. "These sores, and your difficulty breathing, how long have these been happening? A few days or many?"

"Many…days. Ten. Eleven."

Too long for most viruses, she reasoned, and kept reasoning. But as she considered her choices, there was movement by the tree line where the lying-down catbirds were. Perhaps they were impatient and thought medical science was medical magic and she ought to be done by now.

Sakura looked up to briefly scowl in their horrid direction but hadn't the strength to do so. The sight of Madara coming out of the trees robbed her of her strength.

' _Skullface,'_ came a reflexive, parroting voice in her head. It was his name, imprinted in her brain next to his real one, even though his face wasn't a skull anymore. He walked out into the light of the setting sun while the others stayed in their shadowy repose by the trees.

Madara's eyes were brighter than his fellows'. Scarlet, electrified red. Moons of their own, yes, he carried moons in his head. Sakura remembered this creature carrying Suigetsu's torn-up body in its mouth. It had set him on the ground so she could look into its open mouth and see those teeth inside and feel the heated breath from within.

She looked up at two moons.

"Tiny beast from the south," he said. He cast a shadow on Shisui and on her. "You came when summoned."

When she could not say anything to him, he went on without her: "It's clear now that you are a migratory little creature. Always moving far. Making me look for you."

Sakura was very still.

"I go where I will," she stated. "The same as you or any other creature. I said I would deliver another message for you if you asked. I didn't promise to stand by for incoming requests. And—and I brought my own request for you, too. As payment for thi—"

"Did you bring hunters behind you?" sounded Madara's great voice, smothering hers. "Men and guns to hunt my clan? Look at me. I will see lies in you."

She did as he said and became a subject of the red moons. He spoke over her thoughts: "Know that you won't be harmed here, if there are no hunters in your wake. But if you led them to us, I will meet them. I will rip them to long and slim pieces and spread them in the trees. I will strain their blood between my teeth."

Sakura was—very still.

The mouth had opened only once while he spoke, a motion long and slow. Inside were the long teeth and tongue, which were as alive as she was, and could end every thought and meaningful thing that ever existed in her. They closed upon her—in her dreams, they did.

"Answer me."

"I didn't bring any hunters or tell anyone where I was going," she answered as bid, but slowly. "But gunmen don't answer to me in the first place. I'm not responsible for you or any man with a gun who comes after you."

"After you leave here, you will carry my warning to them. They will know what they risk."

So he planned to let her leave. "All right."

"Attend my kin's ills," he said abruptly. The mouth opened two times. "Show me what skill you have in seeing sickness and health. I'll see if you have any worth."

"I have attended him. I believe it's aspergillosis," she replied primly. Madara's mouth stayed frozen, barely parted. "It's an infection from fungus. The spores grow where it's old and damp, in food, usually, and once you eat them they keep growing. They're the cause of that difficult breathing and the sores. It can affect my people, and birds, too." One glance down at Shisui's avian head showed his mouth and eyes were now closed. His front claw was too close to touching her shoe. "If his body doesn't start fighting back against it soon, it could turn fatal."

The beast stayed still and eyed her. Behind him, the sun was half-buried in the treetops. Madara's hide and head blurred with the darkened trees behind him. Sakura could not remain still much longer.

"I can go get a medicine for this if you answer my request, too. As I mentioned."

There was no response this time. For too long a time.

Madara's long tail curled up into the air like a shriveling claw, then thumped down upon the grass.

Sakura's legs were a doe's legs, thin and tight and roiling in the instinct to run.

Twitching in her lower regions now, she prompted softly, "D-do you accept—"

"I do not accept terms from your kind," he interrupted with a hard hiss. "Tell me where to find the medicine. I will remember this sickness for the next time we meet."

"Wh—what do you mean 'next time we meet'?" she blurted, legs twitching." "How many times did you expect to meet after this? I'm here because—to help Shisui! And because I needed to ask something of you, and after we were done, we'd go our separate ways, that's what I thought this was!"

"Never see me again?" he rumbled. "I said no such thing."

Sakura nearly fell from consciousness completely.

"Do tell me your request, though, little red beast," Madara hissed. And he smiled, as he did in her dreams where she saw his mouth and tongue and wide, wide throat. "Tell me what you want to _bargain._ What do you carry in your little limbs and bones? What knowledge for me? You've walked so far since I first saw you."

"I came here for you," she said, breathless. His body grew larger with a brief inhale, watching her.

Sakura spoke to the moons. "I—I thought—that I could use you for something. But maybe that's…just foolish. You've got no knowledge for _me,_ do you? You just want a human slave. Or you want to eat me after all. I wish I did bring a gun. I'd shoot you between your pretty eyes. I'd give you a sickness to remember me."

But midsentence, she gave herself a sickness too, a regret that soiled her anger and all the rest of her. Unlike in Haretta, there was no heat here and no rage, and she wasn't _far away._ This meeting here was—quiet.

Like a doe caught, Sakura didn't breathe.

The only motion in the glen was the beast's jaw parting. Back in the lee of his throat there was a flickering red glow, like a fire were burning in his chest cavity.

"You threaten me. Again," he said underneath a heavy growl.

Her very heart was quiet—begging to stop, stop this dreadful trial, and her fears, stop everything.

"Tiny. Little. _Beast_ ," the monster growled. Sakura fought tears. "Did you come here to hurt me after all? Do you have a sickness packed into your flesh? Is that why you ignore me and try to entice me to anger?"

"Any human not submitting to your demands is whining," Sakura spat back, so she wouldn't sob. "But that's what you seem to expect, and it's not happening. I'm not going to be your slave."

"You aren't a slave, you dramatic little stain."

"I'm not your friend, either," she replied coolly. The beast's head pulled back slightly, carefully. "This is the last time I'm helping you, unless you plan to just threaten my life like the monster you are—"

There was a long, reptilian hiss from him as there would be from a crocodile half-submerged in dark water. Sakura talked over the threat: "I have my own life and I won't let you keep me from it, even if you say you'll hurt me or kill me, I don't care. Good luck finding a second human after you eat me, may you be riddled with bullets trying to replace me."

The hiss morphed in his throat to a vibrating roar that sent birds flying from the treetops. Madara pushed forward so quickly that Sakura was forced backward onto her elbows. He trapped her in a space between his forelegs.

Her startled shriek was nothing to his roar. The sound bathed her in heat and godly terror.

From the fiery throat came: "Your life— _is mine._ "

This was true—paralyzing—the stuff of her tiny human nightmares and now her life.

The echoing boom continued: "Your body and your safety—intact, because I allow it. These words between us and your access to my clan, a gift from me. You step on my gift again and again, tiny beast, for what? For what do you dare— _threaten me_?"

Her eyes were open now, the corners painted with tears. Directly above there was a clear view into the beast's throat where real fire was burning.

"I have seen you stand tall before me and before guns, but now you cower," Madara growled down at the dirt and at the trapped human. "I tolerated you little cries because I thought there may be something different to be had with you. Different than armed hunters or your spineless herd. Since you were capable of it once."

Were she standing up, her spine would not have been able to hold her upright. Right now she was capable of nothing but trembling in the grass. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

"You spoke to me," Madara said, as if it were an answer alone.

"That—that doesn't mean anything!" she shouted back.

"You gave me a way to speak to your kind, and I want to keep it. No matter how you squirm. No matter how much you fear. I do not _demand_ that you stand in front of me, like you are my slave, because you do it on your own, little one," The jaws closed and opened once; his hot breath turned and swept locks of her hair. "I want men to know of me. Know I'm on the mountain and in the trees even when wraiths are not. The world isn't yours, for I am in it."

"It isn't yours, either," she muttered back pettily.

"No. It's the wraiths'. But I'll undo that one day."

"I bring monsters wherever I go," Sakura breathed. "And I do. But I can't—can't let them finish me. I've got to keep going somewhere else, even after this. After you."

She breathed in Madara's smoking breath. "You are not one of your spineless herd," he said like an admittance. His impassioned growling was cooling. "I don't answer _requests_ from armed men that harm my family or me. But I see no lies in you. Even now. Now, I will answer what you want to ask. For you only."

With his legs trapping her and head hanging above, blending to the starless dark beyond it, Madara asked, "What is your request?"

Sakura didn't answer. Her trembling had changed to an instinctive stillness. "Wait. A dark time's coming."

"That doesn't matter. Say your request."

"They'll be coming out in—in minutes," Sakura said. The light of the setting sun was winking out faster than it ever could naturally. That portion of nightly blue and what remained of warm sunset were both becoming wholly blanketed black. "Please—I need to be—up in a tree, before it's totally dark. They're too stupid to climb."

"You will stay here and be safe if any wraiths appear. If it's stupid enough to approach, I will cut it down."

The fist in the grass turned loose and limp. "See them? You can see when the natural light's gone?"

"I can," he replied. "I hear your kind have very poor eyes."

All beings had poor eyes in a dark time, except for gunmen, who wore goggles to see when it was perfect dark out. When sun, moon and star were all covered, only they weren't blinded. Sakura lay in the grass a few nonsensical moments thinking, like a medical professional perhaps, of what physiology could allow any creature similar sight. It may be the same physiology that gave animals red irises and moving rings round the pupil. It may have been something unnatural.

"What are you?" she asked. "You aren't…wraiths," she tested his word for them and disliked it. "How can you speak like a person and look like some animal? You look like nothing I've ever seen."

The clearing had shrunk to the size and darkness of a windowless room; Sakura was outside in a dark time for the third time her life. The last visible thing before total darkness was Madara's silhouette moving, posturing above her. After total darkness, his eyes were a small source of light.

"I am Uchiha," he said from above her. "My clan is Uchiha."

Sakura mouthed the name. It meant nothing to her.

They kept each other's gaze, breathing quietly and not moving. The outline of Madara and the sky and the trees around them were all nothing now. He was red eyes and limitless ink.

"What are you?" asked his bodiless voice in return.

She remained cool and careful. "A migratory creature," she answered, as though he were a gate guard, blocking her way with his talons and his red fire. "After I leave, I'll migrate again. I'll…speak for you again. If you find me."

For the second time that night, the circles in his eyes spun. Instinctively she held her breath.

"I want your name," he demanded. "Every spineless human in your herds that you cross on your migration has it from you. So I want it from you."

"Isn't my name 'tiny beast'?" she said, smiling in the dark a little.

There was no answering chuckle as there would be from a man, no distaste or annoyance as from a stranger on the street. Madara was painted stone, unmoved by her. To offset the loss, she pretended it was no matter to her at all, and stayed prim and collected even in the dark.

"I am Sakura," she told him, and nothing more.

In the lack of natural light, nothing more stirred. He absorbed the sight of her lying underneath him in the grass and Sakura made herself unbothered by it. No gunman had ever lain like this so long without being torn and unmade by the birdlike claws. No one had ever had a tense and alien conversation with a catbird. No one had ever killed one of the It-Men with their hands. It was all surreal and fake-seeming, like a dream or like a play. Like the best plays, like the episodic ones, like a story written in a magazine.

Parts of the sky were coming back to their normal color. More and more deep blue began to bleed through. While she looked at the natural color, she heard Madara's voice. "What is your request, Sakura?"

"I…brought it with me," she replied softly.

He didn't step backward to allow her up, so she had to move backward a bit herself and then slowly stand. Her legs were functional as though hypnotized to be so; she didn't question this. Madara didn't question her pulling something out of her pocket and unfolding a piece of paper. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the many eyes of the other catbirds some distance away in the trees. One of them had its talons on a rock and its neck stretched high up, like some ardent theater fan watching his favorite scene through hobby binoculars. Sakura felt something like embarrassed confusion and turned away.

Madara was lowering himself slightly to sit down, crushing grass with his talons and feet. His tail curled around the tops of the talons like a perched cat. To this sitting cat, Sakura held up her piece of paper that she had run away with.

"You said before that if you saw anyone from my home again, you wouldn't recognize them. I don't believe you. Not with an Uchiha's impeccable eyes," she said airily. Madara did not react. "I think you saw this one. You said he wore 'green skins'. Do you recognize him?"

The red eyes narrowed just slightly, but they lay on Sakura's face, not Lee's small, pictured profile.

"This is your request?"

"Yes. Do you recognize him?"

The red eyes watched her suspiciously for a moment longer, but Sakura's expression was clear and solid.

"I do."

 _I do,_ sang Sakura's soul.

It hurt. It stung like a physical pain from within. It stung like an intense, too-flavorful sweetness in the mouth, which she loved. _Sweet Sakura._

"It was before I saw you. Pressing that worm's flesh open." He paused, but Sakura didn't react, either, only waited with tense expectation. "He ran down a hill, away from the dwellings. He had another with him. One I don't remember. He went down the hill. I saw nothing more."

She would reach into Madara's mouth and pull out his tongue if she could hear _Sweet Sakura_ outside of her own mind.

"That's all I needed," she replied sweetly, and folded it neatly again. "Now, about Shisui. I can find a way to get the antibiotics to you, he should hold stable for a few—"

"That is not necessary," Madara cut her off.

"What—what do you mean not necessary? The infection's stayed with him for over a week, it's not going away on its own. He needs care, he—" Sakura turned halfway around to the spot in the grass she remembered Shisui lying in. The grass bore a dent roughly his size and the body was absent. "He's gone," she added stupidly.

A head peered out from between a thick pair of trees, a long stone's throw away. It was an avian head with ear-tufts now pointing backward and a jovial expression. It had clever, narrowed eyes and one foot poised just atop the ground like an athlete prepared to step into an immediate sprint. It smiled. It disappeared as though into an invisible hideaway behind the tree.

"He moves quickly," Madara said. "And he will not die. Do not concern yourself with his health."

"I'm willing to volunteer myself for her medicine," came Shisui's voice, from a tree a short jump away. He curled around his spine the tree like a cat around a post. His voice did not rasp quite so much as it had when he'd lain on the ground. "If it comes to that. I'll find out if it has any adverse effects. Or if it's no cure and the beast lies after all. Perhaps she's lying right now, and she told her hunters to delay their approach. Otherwise, I'll shed the disease."

"I'll find her again if that ever happens," Madara spoke above her, about her. _Find her_ dragged at the nerves along Sakura's spine and made her deaf to the further exchanges taking place over her head.

It was strange and then uncomfortable and then impossible to ignore the burgeoning confusion that threat brought. Other discomforts trailed after it: Shisui's quiet disappearance when she wasn't looking, the _shedding_ of a disease, that her care and attention had been for nothing, the realization that she was now surrounded by catbirds—one or several—at all four cardinal points.

At the center of the points was Madara and herself, and he was saying—"Father, we'll leave"—and Sakura felt imminent collapse, like a house about to fall down.

 _Sweet Sakura,_ she said to herself in Lee's wonderful voice. Wherever he was, he was miles from this dream-like stage—stage, she parroted again—I'm on a stage.

Madara had placed her on a stage. For his family. For examination. She had really come here, and done this, and it tied her to man-eating beasts, and it was unremovable now. Why—had she done this? Why had she made this decision again?

Sakura felt, for the first time in a very long evening, _poisoned._

 _Sweet Sakura. My god. Get out of there._

' _Lee, you have to come with me.'_

 _Of course! Let's go!_

She had to go, even though her legs were threatening to abandon her and give out again, as they had on the road to Rissinia earlier. She had to go. Go away from here, from these things and whatever had really transpired here.

"I'd like to be on my way," she proclaimed. She forced an unnatural pause to avoid tripping over the words and then added, "And yes, I'll deliver your message."

Those feathered, tufted ears on Shisui's head perked up. All of him had perked up by now, despite that he did truly have sores and a sickness. He had lain still and faked the intensity of his difficulties in front of her. This one had all but _tricked_ her.

He deserved a slap and a shove off some stairs, but mice could not punish cats. The only revenge was the pathetic effort of keeping neutral so that he couldn't relish a reaction that he wanted.

"Then go," Madara replied lowly, jerking his head harshly sideways. There were no horns on it, but weren't there when she first saw him? "Roam where you will. I'll find you again when I must. You'll know not to run."

' _Why do you have a face,'_ thought Sakura nonsensically as she ignored him and objectified him. _'You were 'Skullface'. You were. How did you grow a face like a wolf instead of your other one, did you 'shed' it?'_

"Did you have another request?" he asked. The cat tail behind him swept near the ground. "Do you want to ask something of me?"

The tone bore no desire to entertain questions, only a distaste for Sakura's silent but blatant appraisal of him just now. If only she were in her right mind, she might request or ask more things, but it might put her more in debt with the Uchiha. They may demand a surgical procedure next, or a miracle, because they were animals who didn't know the difference. Except perhaps they weren't animals, or wraiths, but some other new thing that people had no knowledge of whatsoever. Sakura knew within minutes they would see her sweating.

Sakura knew she was partway in her right mind, at least, because she had a fear of the red eyes again. They were sources of light in a dark time no longer. They were moons again. This almost spilled out her mouth. Madara was waiting on her to speak. She told him goodbye instead as practiced many times at home with her mother's guests. If she were still not in her right mind at all, she would have offered to serve him tea.

"Do you want to be carried out in my teeth?" Madara rumbled at her. His hot breath was nothing to the chill that rattled her whole spine and body. "Begone."

Sakura left without any proper goodbye. Not one to Madara, not Shisui on her right or the handful of spectating catbirds behind them.

At the edge of the open space, the trees turned immediately thick and dark, as the sun had fully set now and the natural moonlight barely breached the canopy. The shadows of trees was thick—and then painted. The sleek pelt of another catbird finally showed through the dark and then the red eyes, of course—Sakura had forgotten about Shisui first, and then Itachi entirely. He was poised like a black sphinx still. Not even the tail had uncurled from over the forelegs.

"I'll walk you back if you want me to," he offered when she was near. His soft voice was startling compared to Madara's deep one and Shisui's casual, horrible jollity.

"Hopefully you won't get shot," she replied, also softly.

"Don't worry," Itachi replied in kind, but didn't explain further. At that point, Sakura passed him and began to walk fully in the dark woods. She could see only a handful of trees ahead of her. Faintly behind was that silk-soft sound of Itachi moving after her.

To hear his presence was better than to not, and he didn't blatantly antagonize her like the other ones did. Itachi was the cordial one of the bunch and perhaps her favorite. There was no one on the earth to whom she could say this aloud, and not be crucified for insanity.

With Itachi walking quietly at her side again, Sakura kept on, thinking next to nothing, holding her few thoughts very, very close lest they fall into true insanity and never be rescued.

* * *

When finally the trees were thinning, Itachi stopped walking and said goodbye. She did not remember it.

The color of the night sky attracted her eye when it ceased to be uniform. The cloudless night-dark blue was gently lighting up through the trees with white and gold from electric streetlights in Rissinia. She walked through the trees, then a few more trees, and then was out. She walked towards the light and the walls.

Sakura was alone in the wide, wide field adjacent to the foxhunting woods. She could have been kidnapped or killed there. Or anywhere since she left home, really. A stranger had approached her in the first month after Konoha and asked for either her money or her skirt to be pulled down and he'd called her a very pretty maiden but she had argued with him and he'd called her a prudish bitch and she had run and did not remember the rest of it. Funny how that happened. That man was just a stranger, one of many.

Sometimes she felt uncomfortable around Tsunade because she _wasn't_ a stranger now. She was compassionate and loyal like a real friend, like her friends who had been mauled to death at home and great God even know why—why had she done it—why did she talk to Madara like that? Was she better now? Free of the poison, or victorious somehow? It might be that Madara lied all along, and did view her as a slave. It might be that he only wanted to antagonize her for his own amusement. He could do anything he wanted to her. He had fire in his organs and he would strain her blood between his teeth.

Sakura walked steadily on the grass, feeling the sweat on her back and thighs. Was she really steady? _'I'm far away,'_ she thought, like she had in Haretta, but it didn't echo. This time she was able to remember her name.

That was an improvement. It had to mean she'd done well. She would get a good grade.

"I'm…I'm right for coming out here," she tried aloud. It came out like a question. "I said I would do it and I did it," she tried again. "I. Did it. I'm…the best." That time she laughed a little. It turned into a steady giggle.

She was a little mad already. She thought about those women in Calstoa who made fun of her. She made her voice chime like a lady to be feared: " _Yes,_ Ihave pet monsters, ladies. Don't worry, they won't hurt you, unless I tell them to! Now, now, mind my tiger, too—"

The fantasies picked up spare animals from her daydreams at the gym, which had only been earlier that day, till the giggling was so pervasive she almost fell over. In her dreams, the Calstoa sluts and the Burelia men who told her to kill herself were stomped into the dirt. The fantasies bled and bled.

The fantasy that her confrontation with Madara was successful and correct and he saw special value in her glowed more than all the others did. Was it fantasy? Was she a servant now or not? Did he say once that his clan had killed the Konoha invaders or had she dreamed that?

"I've got you, Lee," she murmured aloud. In her mind he whispered back, she knew it for truth. It steadied her gait and made her smile. Lee had told her many times that she was confident, which she knew for truth.

The only road to town still open was the larger gate which she had never used before, a short walk along the city wall from the familiar one. It had electric lights on the wall above and even two on the ground nearby. The gate guard asked her if she needed help and she said no, no, no, no way, no thank you, sir, thank you!

He took her by the arm and led her through the gate with no inspection. She was deposited at a little table where guards took their breaks, while her chaperone went inside a little brick shed. Another guard nearby had his back to his post and his front facing Sakura, blatantly staring at her, utterly confused by her calm posture and smile. She may have been in a foggy cloud of something, some drug, perhaps—

"If you drugged her, I will cut your fucking fingers off! Move! _Move!_ Where'd you put her?!"

Tsunade approached from the street and caught sight of Sakura lounging at the table. She wore a thin, silky nightrobe like what was worn by the beautiful women who sat and smoked in windowsills the day they'd arrived in the city. She had seamless peach lipstick and no shoes.

The staring gate guard leaped over in front of Sakura's table. "Ma'am, she's is custody, she's not leaving the premises until—"

The man's feet hopped off the ground and all of him collapsed messily down back to it. By the time he'd fallen, Tsunade's flying fist had completed its upward swing past the man's chin.

"I am custody," she spat down in his direction. She stomped around him.

"Tsunade, hi!" Sakura smiled. Her legs were crossed and hands in her lap. "I just got back, I need to tell you some things." Tsunade's hands slammed onto the table and rattled it. Sakura was still somewhat in shock, but she did flinch at the movement.

"You little bitch," she ground out.

Sakura's hands grasped at each other for support under the table. "I'm, I'm sorry?"

"I should rip your fucking teeth out! You little _bitch!_ " Her hands whipped forward and lifted Sakura up the front of her shirt; she dangled like a little animal. "You left town without word for hours! With nothing! After all I've given you, you disrespect my word, for nothing! How fucking dare you!" Her hands made a different sound when they cracked across Sakura's face, once, twice, the third time Sakura finally came to her senses and started shrieking.

Another guard was running up from the street. "Madame Tsunade, please bring her to the south office," he said. His voice sounded like he'd not exerted himself at all. "There's no need to do this outdoors."

"Where did you go," Tsunade demanded. "Go ahead and tell me, you've lost any privilege to privacy. You snuck off to get laid? Or maybe you tried to run away. And chickened out."

"Noo," Sakura whined against these accusations. Her hand covered her stinging, bruised cheek while the other grasped feebly at Tsunade's wrist, all while her nice shoes scraped at the dirt.

" _What_ did you do?" the woman hissed, quieter.

"Talked to him," Sakura whispered back. She opened her tear-laden eyes. "Tsunade. I feel better."

Tsunade felt only worse; her glare intensified till her pupils were furious pinpricks. She slowly allowed Sakura to return to the ground. The girl gave a brief, hollow thanks and then began to smooth out her hair and outfit, making herself more presentable despite the mark of punishment on her cheek. Tsunade's watchful eye observed no shaking hands or erratic movement, but she only had to wait. She saw that Sakura's pupils were not pinpricks or even normally sized, but dilated unnaturally wide.

" _That's_ how you feel?" Tsunade said, lowly, like a threat, like Madara often did.

"He doesn't want to hurt me or eat me. He just wants a, a liaison. Sort of. Whenever we happen to cross paths, which won't be often."

"And you believe that."

"Yes," Sakura replied, too quick and too loud.

"Why the fuck do you trust that thing's word? _Why_ did you go?"

"I needed to ask him a question," she said sternly back, the absurdity of which made Tsunade's eyes blaze. When she asked _what question_ Sakura spoke of Lee, and meant to take out her magazine page from her pocket, but her mentor's own questioning kept going. Why, why, why, had you done something so stupid, you could be dead right now—

The stoic guard following Tsunade watched them from a slight distance, observing the movements of their bodies, which were minimal. Their hands and faces were mostly still, even though one of them had choked the other just now. Sakura acted as though she had not been choked or wildly hurt or frightened, lest she lose face or lose the argument. It was a mimicked behavior; both of them knew it.

Sakura spoke the truth that had moved her to leave the city: "I wanted to know somebody else in the world saw him and he was okay—"

"That councilman in Yuraka saw him and _spoke_ to him months after Madara saw him in Konoha," Tsunade barked, interrupting her most heartfelt thing. "So what the hell does it matter what Madara saw him before that? You walked into a demon's territory for that? For information that is of fucking _negative_ value?"

The tears began to cool and harden like granite upon Sakura's face. "That's not…that's not the point."

"The point is that you left without telling me! For this insignificant bit of satisfaction from hearing someone talk about someone you know."

"The point is that it's not pointless! I'm not pointless! Stop hurting me!"

Now both Tsunade's hands grasped Sakura's shoulders, fingers pinching into the flesh. "You lied to my face, do you not give a shit? Do you not care that I've been trying to help you and you could have killed yourself for nothing and Lee would never even know?!"

"I don't care what you have to say about it," she said, and it was true. Tsunade's face twisted into molds of discomfort, as though she were being choked yet again.

The guard observed Tsunade's hands sliding from the girl's shoulders, then her taking a half step back. He observed a divide, a half step wide.

Sakura had started to shed helpless tears. Her pupils started to dilate in a limp bout of shock, too long delayed. What had been confidence or bravado before was melting away with adrenaline. This time Tsunade didn't hold her in her arms and give her shoulder for support.

She could have apologized, but she didn't.

Tsunade left her eventually, pivoting to be near the quiet guard. He murmured reports into her ear while she stood with crossed arms looking at nothing.

No one and nothing looked at Sakura, either. With nothing clearly left to do, she returned to the table and arranged her legs and laid one hand on top of the other so she might appear dignified, or prepared, or ladylike, and maybe she would soon start to be or feel one of those things again. She had walked in the gate assured of herself, satisfied in this outcome, but no longer. Her mentor got in the way.

Her mentor didn't come back for a long while and there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. So Sakura talked to Lee.

She talked to him about home and school and her new job.

She reintroduced him to Ino and they all had a delightful lunch together at the Konoha bakery, where Sakura paid for croissants and chocolate for all of them.

She talked to them both about her favorite books or late and what plays she would make them attend with her if they were here.

She tugged playfully at Ino's ponytail and her fingers mimicked the motions to braid it.

All this had value to her. All this was worth her flagrant running off and reckless abandon before a man-eating animal. She must believe her actions were right and their result was successful, even if Tsunade didn't. If she were not in control and orchestrating this madness on purpose, then she was losing her awareness of reality and safety. Then she was wrong about Madara's intentions and what the catbirds wanted, and great God knew what else.

But the sound of _Sweet Sakura_ was greater than God. It was the sound of goodness and bliss, which had never existed in Tidusa, never truly anywhere since home. It was only in her mind now.

Madara and his clan were an obstacle she would overcome to hear it again, to feel right again. It mattered not whether it _was_ right, only that it felt so.

Two more city guards came eventually to escort them back to the inn. Rex and the stag had both been stabled for the night, and Tsunade handcuffed Sakura to her bed for the night.

* * *

Uchiha Meeting 1 done. It was an awkward, messy first real conversation (not at gunpoint) but now things can smooth out.

This chapter sucked the life out of me, though. Everything from Sakura leaving the Rissinia gym to Madara saying "What is your request" was re-written almost completely, and many other bits were re-written on the final editing pass. I worry that the Uchiha meeting felt too similar to the one in Chapter 2 in Haretta (the one at gunpoint). The intention was that both Sakura and Madara intended for the conversation to go a certain way and each of them kept derailing it for the other. Madara _was_ testing her trustworthiness (he didn't expect her to diagnose Shisui's sickness straightaway lol) and Sakura was calmer in this meeting compared to the last one because she was halfway in shock from seeing Lee's face.

In that convo and in the final scene, I tried to capture the messiness of conflicting emotions and poor decision-making but I think I just made messy writing. This is also meant to show that Sakura is falling apart overall less when confronted with her fears, but she also rebuffs Tsunade's concerns and thinks that her ends justify her means. She is too black and white and too dismissive/judgmental of people who don't say what she wants to hear.

Anyway. This chapter took too long and I WANT TO TRY WRITING SHORTER CHAPTERS. Maybe 6-7k? Much as I love how ultra-long chapters feel, I want to write more and wallow in lengthy narrative/editing less. These last several months have been good for my writing. I'm balancing this fic and some fantasy/darkish scifi/drama Haikyuu fics on AO3, where I use the name Umbreon_ly). And I know these long chapters drag me down. Not to mention they make readers wait disgusting amounts of time for more content. And I don't like doing that to you. What do you say to some shorter, somewhat faster chapters? Some traveling adventures? Some more Uchihas and dangerous dark time snafus and plot events? Fun with catbirds? Does anyone here like The Last Guardian?

Thanks for reading my extremely tardy and fancy garbage, everyone.


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